by M. O'Keefe
Caprice Vodka was paying Elegance a stupid amount of money for us to come into this bar, dress up in their custom costume, and give away their overpriced potato juice. Introduce people to the product, make the first experience so amazing they had to come back for more. It wasn’t a hard job. Not when you looked like the three of us.
“You guys need a little party-starter?” Sun asked, taking out the small amber bottle of coke she had tucked in her bra. She did a bump and so did Maria, but I shook my head.
“No thanks.”
The vibe of this place made me feel like someone needed to be clear-headed tonight.
“Suit yourself,” Maria said and put her feet in her high-heeled leather booties, fluffed her skirt, and headed out to the bar. Sun followed, fierce and glittering.
In our costumes we looked like old school cigarette girls, with sparkly short dresses, puffed out by itchy netting. We wore black hose with the seam up the back and we carried little boxes with straps around our necks, but instead of smokes we sold shots.
But really we sold a feeling.
My sister didn’t understand. She said she did, but I knew deep down she thought I was a glorified stripper or a high-end prostitute.
But I wasn’t either of those things.
I was a party-starter. A human version of what Sun had in her bra. And I got paid well to do it.
I gave myself one more second in front of the mirror to put on my lipstick. A bright red that made my eyes bluer, my hair brighter.
I looked hot in this dress. My makeup was perfection. My hair, too. This was me. I had this shit in the bag. And the men staring at me to prove it. To remind me. To show me, when I wasn’t sure or I forgot, who I was. What my value was.
And if that made me sad? If I wanted more?
The baby and the husband and the future and my dream.
I’d get over it.
I’d adapt.
I’d start the party.
It was what I was good at.
Chapter Two
ABBY
BEFORE
The Reader did work for the club. He was security at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the big dark window and the second story. He stood there, with his legs braced wide and his arms over his chest like some kind of pirate. A silent, watching warrior.
Except the only thing he seemed to be watching was me.
But only when my back was turned.
His gaze was a heavy, weighty thing over my hair and back, the side of my face, even my legs.
But when I turned, my neck prickling, he would just be scanning the crowd, like a security guy doing his job.
The first hour of this, I thought I was imagining it. I mean, his job was to watch the crowd, and I was in fact part of the crowd. It was inevitable he’d glance over me from time to time, and it was my own overactive self-worth that thought he was looking at me.
But as the night wore on he got sloppy, and I kept catching him like Billy Hauser in eighth grade. Looking away too fast when I caught him looking at me.
It was actually kind of cute.
And considering his beautiful face and long lanky body in that fine suit…it quickly got hot.
Not interested on my part became totally fucking interested.
When I watched him through my eyelashes he really looked the part of a gangster. Dressed sharp and giving the impression of something deadly all the same. His blank face still and composed, giving away nothing but the slight whiff of disdain. I watched him turn everyone away from that stairwell with just a shake of his head.
But he was just a bouncer in character for this club. It was a clever bit of staging, just like me.
He looked gangster, but he wasn’t really.
As the night wore on, this little game of his was all I could feel. Not the pinch of my shoes or the ache of the cocktail box around my neck. The trickle of sweat down my spine.
Just the hot slide of his eyes over me every few minutes.
I circled the small cocktail tables while Sun and Maria worked the back VIP rooms. Bottle service was flying out the door and we were all grinning at each other.
Our cash bags were stuffed.
I poured out shots for a couple sitting in the big banquettes at the back of the room and felt my neck tingle in a way that had become familiar.
The Reader.
Again.
Turning, I caught his eyes for a second before he glanced away, scanning the room like a man who was just doing his job.
Oh, he did not know the trouble he was starting.
Give me a man pretending not to be interested and I’d turn myself inside out to get him to stop pretending.
I wanted to smile and go pet his slicked-back hair, mess it up.
He could look all he liked—that was the point of me. The point of the dress and the silk stockings. I would tell him I liked him looking at me.
And I really liked him smiling at me.
Fuck it, I thought and I made my way over to his side.
“You need anything?” I asked above the sound of the crowd and the band.
He shook his head.
“A drink or whatever?”
Still he didn’t look at me. He kept scanning the crowd like I wasn’t there.
“Who do you think you’re kidding?” I asked with a laugh that finally got his attention. “Yeah,” I said. “You’ve been staring at me all night.”
He looked at me again, a sly second, a bright moment and I felt the shimmy of interest, the cat curl of desire.
Oh, you man, you don’t know it yet. But you are mine.
“Part of my job,” he said, pretending that there was something more interesting than me happening over my shoulder when we both knew that there wasn’t.
But I liked the show of it, the game.
“Watching me is part of your job?”
“Watching everyone.” Oh, he was telling me I wasn’t special. Except I was. I was pretty fucking special.
“Your loss,” I said and walked back into the crowd to do my job.
Trouble, a voice whispered in my head. A voice that sounded very much like my sister’s. This man is trouble and you know it. You feel it.
But wasn’t that the problem?
I loved trouble.
Sun, Maria and I all arrived together on the second night too, a little trick that we’d learned about traveling in a group. The bars we went to were upscale places, they had to be to afford us, but upscale had its own kind of creep.
And when we were together no one bothered us. We had a hard glittering asshole-repellent force field that I think actually came mostly from Sun, but whatever, I’d travel under her force field any day.
The side door closed behind us and we all stood there for a second, blinking in the dim light. Bates didn’t come running to greet us and Patty wasn’t behind the bar. There was, however, a band setting up on stage.
The band was irrelevant to me.
I searched the shadowy corner of the bar, looking for The Reader. And I couldn’t hide my smile when I saw him there, his shoulders bent and though I couldn’t see it, I knew he had a book open in front of him.
“You’re acting like a whipped little girl. You get that, right?” Sun asked.
“I don’t care,” I told her. And I didn’t.
This was chemistry and it made everything else seem insignificant.
The Reader wasn’t wearing his jacket, and the fine white fabric of his shirt pulled taut across his shoulders, and all I wanted was to run my hand over that shoulder. Feel the heat of his skin through the cotton.
His hair wasn’t pushed off his forehead, held in place by some gross gel. It was slipping into his eyes and it was curly. Really curly.
Wavy and thick and completely irresistible.
The hair made me do it, really. His hair freaking compelled me.
“You coming?” Sun asked, standing in the middle of the dance floor looking back at me because I hadn’t moved from the doorway.
&nbs
p; “Give me a second.”
Sun shook her head. “Look at you, so hot for a man just because he’s not hot for you.”
“Fuck off, Sun,” I said. Because he was hot for me, he just—for some soon-to-be-inconsequential reason—wasn’t ready to admit it yet.
I walked toward the bar where The Reader sat turning pages, a cup of coffee at his elbow. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing thick forearms covered in tattoos.
Oh. Sweet. Lord.
Really, he was all of my favorite things.
He swept back the dark curls from hanging in his eyes so he could keep reading. The move reminded me so much of my sister that it made him seem safe. Familiar.
I should have known better.
“Hey,” I said, leaning against the bar, close enough he could smell my perfume.
He glanced up and then back down at his book. “Dressing room is through the far door.”
“I know.” I tilted my head so my hair fell down across my shoulder, pooling just a little left of his hand. I saw his fingers twitch and tried not to smile.
“You need something?” he asked, turning the page.
“Just thought I’d say hi. Be friendly.”
He glanced up and his eyes were dark blue. Like navy. The color of twilight or the ocean on a dark day. They were made more beautiful by the thick lashes they were surrounded by. He had dark caramelly skin, a firm jaw, and a nose that looked like it had been broken once.
And that fucking hair.
“I’m Abigail,” I said, holding out my hand.
He glanced at my hand and then back at his book. And as a dismissal it might have worked if he hadn’t spent five hours last night tracking me across this bar, like I was a deer he was hunting.
“People call me Abby.”
He nodded as if that made sense, like he’d been taking bets on what my name was and that worked out just fine for him.
“Sooo,” I drawled when he was silent. “Usually what happens next is you tell me your name.”
“That’s what happens next?” Those deep ocean eyes of his had a twinkle, just a flash and then gone.
“Usually.”
“Jack.”
“Nice to meet you, Jack.”
He was silent.
“What are you reading?”
That made him look up again with what I could have sworn was hope on his face, like a dog when you walk by his leash.
But then he looked back down, ignoring me.
Fuck, this guy was tough. But the tough ones were worth it. I peeked over his shoulder at the title on the top of the page.
“Tipping Point,” I cried. “I read that.” Inwardly I cringed at my own eagerness. Not at all cool. But there were not that many books I could say that about. And what were the chances he was reading one of those few books I had managed to finish?
Silent, he looked up at me. Clearly a man of few words, but again, his attention felt like interest. Like he didn’t just hand that out to everyone.
“Well, I listened to it,” I qualified. “Audiobook at the gym.” And yes, mentioning the gym had the predictable effect of making him look down at me, scanning my body in a quick second as if confirming—yep, I was in killer shape. “My sister wouldn’t shut up about it a few Christmases ago, and I listened to it so we could talk about it. It’s good, right? You liking it?”
I swallowed back a few more far-too-eager words and had the very foreign feeling of having said too much. It was the book talk—threw me off my game.
“I read it a few years ago,” he said, his voice a quiet thing. A careful thing. Like he didn’t use it a whole lot. “I’m re-reading.”
“Small things can make big changes,” I said, quoting the book.
His lip turned up for just a moment and I was struck by how elegant he was. Thin and sharp, the dress shirt cut just right over his shoulders.
And his silence was like a magnet, pulling out all of my words.
“I started to put some of it to work with my job, and you’d be amazed at how much more booze I sell. People really respond to some of that stuff. And once I started like really paying attention and trying to capitalize on those small things, I could see it working all over the place.”
There was a moment of silence after my rush of excited words and I heard my own voice, my own stupid eagerness.
Selling booze? Good God, Abby!
My face got painfully hot and my skin itched like a rash and I realized I was blushing. Something I hadn’t done in years. Since I was a kid standing up in class with the wrong answer to the wrong question.
Wrong, always wrong.
Guys I was usually interested in did not talk about books, and here I was four minutes into a conversation and I was out of my depth.
“That sounds dumb.” I took a step back, aborting project The Reader.
“It doesn’t sound dumb at all.”
“I mean, I know he wasn’t talking about selling booze—”
“It’s not dumb,” he insisted. “It’s very smart.”
I gaped at him because the truth was, no one ever—and I mean EVER—accused me of being smart.
And I felt myself opening up, blinking like I couldn’t believe my eyes. What a strange conversation, like one of the strangest in my life. I talked about a book. He called me smart. I had no idea what to do next.
This wasn’t my usual brand of chemistry. There was something unpredictable about it, something I couldn’t manipulate, and its hooks were sunk deep inside of me. I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t.
“You don’t talk a lot, do you?” I asked.
“You talk plenty for both of us.” Again he smiled, and I was ruined by that smile. Torn to pieces by that smile, by the implied intimacy of his words.
“You want to get a drink after work?” I asked, because that was usually the next step in this dance.
The smile fell from his face and I was flooded by the strange sensation of having gotten this all wrong.
Like, the Reader didn’t want me after all.
“You don’t want to get a drink after work,” he said, his voice low and warm. Intimate.
Ah, this was slightly more familiar.
“I don’t?” I said, giving him the coyest of my coy smiles. “What do I want?”
“You want me to take you back to my place.”
The heat between us was thick. Humid.
“You’re jumping ahead a few steps, aren’t you?” I asked.
I’d tipped my head and didn’t realize that my hair was now touching his hand until he opened his palm. We both watched as he took the ends of my hair and rubbed them between his thumb and forefinger.
The way someone would touch velvet or silk; as if to see if it was as soft as it looked.
I couldn’t feel it, I knew that, my hair was dead and he wasn’t exerting any force, I felt no sting in my scalp of him pulling it.
But I felt something.
I felt something so big it changed the beat of my heart.
“You’re very beautiful,” he said. I was silent, all my energy on breathing and my hair and watching him twine it between his fingers. “But you know that.”
I did. I knew that. It was the prevailing truth of my life. But he made it sound sad. Like my beauty was a thing that hurt him.
“Last night, I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
“You said you weren’t watching me.”
He smiled, lightning quick, there and gone.
“We both know I was lying.”
I could not help but lean forward, everything about him—his face, his eyes, the soft whisper of his voice—compelling me closer. And closer.
He curled his hand into a fist around my hair, finally pulling it, the fine threads stinging at my scalp. The pain so welcome I nearly moaned, shocked. But my shock was laced with heat, a kind of back splash of desire. I felt flooded with adrenaline and connection.
He leaned forward, speaking right into my ear, his breath sending chills down m
y spine.
“This place is not for you,” he said, and his low voice contained an edge. A warning. A threat?
“What are you talking about?” I tried to lean back, away from him so I could see his eyes, but his hand was a sudden fist in my hair, holding me still. Hurting… just a little.
Fear curled through me. Fear, desire, the great velvety depth of the unknown between us.
He leaned forward, his knee pressing into me between my legs, and I bit my lip, swallowing back a whimper. His eyes were fixated on my lips like he was memorizing them. Like there might be a test later.
“Don’t pretend, princess. You felt it when you walked in yesterday. I saw it on your face.”
I couldn’t argue, so I didn’t bother. Instead, I pushed just slightly against his knee, feeling in this dark bar, like an animal. Like we were both just animals.
Despite the fear.
Because of the fear?
I didn’t know anymore.
“This is a warning,” he said. “Keep your head down. Stop talking to me and don’t think about anything but leaving.”
“I shouldn’t think about you?”
He pulled again on my hair, like his fingers twitched out of his control. “This isn’t a game, princess. I don’t exist for you. And you don’t exist for me. Not even a little.”
He let go of my hair and sat back, his face completely blank, like nothing had happened between us. Like I was a stranger asking for directions.
It was utterly disorienting, considering I was panting and nearly sweating and so fucking turned on my body was giving off sparks.
Cold and unruffled, he turned back to his book.
All at once I felt dumb. Like I’d imagined the last few minutes. And dumb did not sit well with me—I’d had my fill of that when I was a kid.
“If you have problems, you can talk to Patty,” he said, as I stood there seething. “You should move on, I’m busy.”
I waited a second for him to do something. Say something. Call me princess. Ask me nicely. Anything. But he kept turning pages like I wasn’t even there.
And the thing about me, mostly because I really wasn’t very smart, is that I never said the right thing at the right time. Like it was always two days later, standing in the shower, that I figured out what I should have said to some asshole in line at the grocery store.
