by Anne Martin
The Secret Billionaire’s
Pregnant Bride
or
Tricking Trixie
Las Vegas Brides of Convenience
Book 2
Anne Martin
Copyright 2019 by Anne Martin
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Chapter 1
Trixie O’Hara
“Are you going tonight?” Jezabel leaned towards the mirror and pursed her luscious lips. The air conditioner rattled, keeping our prep trailer cool enough to prevent my lipstick from melting.
“No.”
“Minx will be so sad. You hate it when she’s sad.”
I snorted and adjusted the black leather corset under my bust. “What’s the game? Another shopping trip to her favorite lingerie store? I’ll stick with Jason. No one does a custom corset like him. His aren’t exactly comfortable, but at least he understands that women are still human, organic beings whose inner organs probably shouldn’t be shoved into their throats for the sake of the hourglass. I want to find whoever said that was the ideal body and strangle them.”
“If you do, Trix,” she said, pulling out her mascara wand, “Make sure you get it on film. Save your strangling for an audience. No, she’s taking us to a strip club.”
I cursed under my breath and it wasn’t entirely from the corset. “Women or men?”
“The women are stripping.”
I cursed again while she beamed at me and batted her ridiculous extended lashes. It was all costume, of course, like my leather pants and corset along with jacket. I’d made a promise in a moment of weakness ages ago that I’d go along with Minx if she went to a strip club for her ‘girl’s night out’. Minx worked the clubs, so I’d thought she’d never spend her off hours hanging out in them.
I had a reputation for swinging both ways, mostly because I didn’t like arm candy, or being arm candy, nothing with candy. If a woman wasn’t always angling for a man that meant she liked women, right? It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the entire sex world was five steps beyond hygienic, particularly in Vegas.
“Are you going?” she asked, cocking her head and eying me.
I sighed. Minx was the sweetest, overly motherly person in the world. If I begged off with some pathetic excuse like a headache or cramps, Minx would trot over with some magical elixir that I’d have to either consume or heal. For some reason Felicia’s co-worker was always trying to take care of the three women in Vegas who needed it least. “If Minx can handle it, I guess I’ll have to.”
Jezabel squealed. Sometimes she forgot that she was a tough bull rider and went back to her cheerleader roots. Speaking of roots, I’d seen hers, and they were blond. In our business, it was hard enough to be taken seriously if you wore a bra, throw in blond and you were finished. Jezabel was a peculiar combination of drop-dead serious and sequins that kept the male viewers unbalanced—just how she liked them.
I took a second to disinfect the makeup area along with my brushes.
“You’re OCD, you know that?” she said with a smile, not her hardened race warrior smirk.
I shot her a look. “And you’re not an idiot. I won’t tell if you don’t.”
She hooked her arm in mine for a second. “I’m glad you’re coming tonight. You’re like a guy without the testosterone.”
I pulled her arm out of mine. “Yeah. That wasn’t offensive. Is Kitten coming?”
She kind of froze for a second. She was still in shock from Nix’s whole turning-into-some-kind-of-decent-human-being thing. We didn’t work during church hours. All the better for nursing a hangover, at least that was the majority of the crew’s opinion. I hadn’t been a heavy drinker for ages. I did yoga like every city girl dragged into the desert by the promise of all that sun. Riiiiight. Money.
“When does Kitten do anything other than Nix?” There was that tougher-than-rocks smile of hers.
I gave her a hard smile in return. “Don’t be catty about Kitty.”
“Oooh, is that a threat, Trix?”
I rolled my eyes. “If you’re a witch, I’ll have to be nice to make up for it. You know that out of the two of us, niceness comes much more naturally to you.”
She took a moment to adjust her cleavage before stepping out of our trailer. We were doing a race, me driving, Jez riding. It was a stupid stunt, but the audience liked watching bosomy Jez coming out of the back of my assault truck on her nightmare of a horse to race across the desert in a swirl of dust. Whatever the audience liked, well, not whatever. We strictly kept it covered. No clothing malfunctions for us no matter what they did for ratings. Only the men were allowed to take off their shirts. That was fine with me. Support was a necessary thing.
After the trip through the desert, and the delay on the way back when Pixel took out my wheel, after the race so it was just spite, dickwhistle, I felt like settling down in front of my fake fire with a nice novel, smooth jazz, and a cup of tea, not putting on a push-up bra.
In the hotel lobby, Minx was already waiting for me when I got off work. She wore a little red number five sizes too small, at least up top and leaned on Horse’s well-muscled forearm.
Horse was the biggest certifiable jerk in Vegas. I never should have moved into the hotel where he had his notorious suite where girls fought to wake up to his ridiculously intense blue eyes, but it was the cleanest hotel in Vegas with reasonable long-term tenant rent. Still, crossing paths with Horse in the lobby made my heart race faster and my kill-trigger touchy. He just knew how to rub me all wrong. The first time I’d seen him hanging out of a truck, swinging at Nix as we raced across the desert, I’d known there wouldn’t ever be a peaceful moment between us.
The man looked so good soaked blood and filth, orange explosions reflecting in those deep blue eyes.
I blinked the lobby back into focus and shoved down all memories of Horse’s ridiculously muscled chest ash-streaked and sweat-soaked. Minx giggled as he said something I couldn’t hear that was no doubt a blatant come-on. Was she going to end up in his bed? Not on my watch.
“What’s wrong with you?” I shoved him back, away from Minx and just in general putting him off balance. I should have shoved his shoulders, not his pectorals, because he’d flexed on impact, and the feel of those muscles made me snarl more than was necessary.
His dark blue eyes narrowed as he looked me up and down. I grabbed his cleft chin and forced it up.
“Up here or you’re going to hurt down there. If you don’t get control of your driver, I’m going to put a bomb under his hood. I’ll make sure you’re in the cab when it goes off.”
His eyes widened and he jerked away from me, but then there was that easy grin to go with his devil eyes. “You’re losing your touch, Trix. You’re supposed to issue threats when there isn’t an audience, unless this is part of the show.” His smile turned slippery seductive. Was that a come-on? It felt like a come-on, and part of my body wanted to oblige. He knew how to look good and make a woman feel desirable. Dickwhistle.
I hissed, “It’s a promise or a warning. I don’t do threats. Talk to Pixel before he gets himself killed under my tires.”
I turned and grabbed Minx by the elbow, dragging her to the elevator while the man-whore chuckled behind us. I let go of her once the doors closed.
“You two have good chemistry. Is he a regular of yours?” she asked trying to look innocent. She probably was. I didn’t try to control the rumors about me and my fantastical sex life, as in it was mostly fantasy, the fictional kind.
I snorted. “Like that’s going to happen.”
She frowned as she studied me, her hair as red as her mouth. “Right. What’s the fun in that? I mean, it’s Horse, the legend, and you’re you. Don’t tell me that the two of you haven’t gotten along in the time it took to enjoy some alone time.”
“My alone time is way longer than my not-killing-Horse time.”
She snickered at me.
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. Horse is a calculated man-whore. I’m more impetuous. What’s in the bag?” I nodded at the fancy one she was carrying.
She beamed at me, unintentionally batting her false eyelashes. It was Vegas. Some girls, like Minx flirted with everyone as a state of being. “There was a sale, two for the price of one, and when I mentioned that this would be perfect on you, the guy halved that price, so two dresses, seventy-five percent off!”
I sighed and shook my head, but took the bag as the bell dinged to my floor. “He practically paid you to take them off his hands. It was like an act of goodwill that you couldn’t exactly refuse, even if blue isn’t my thing.”
We got to my room and I pulled the dress out and gave her a look.
She shrugged helplessly. “You’d look so good in color. You know, something that brings out your complexion instead of black all the time. It has to get boring.”
I shuddered. “I think I’m coming down with a cold.” Minx was always trying to make me more girly, colorful, like an animated version of myself. Not everyone could be Technicolor.
She wagged her red fingernail in my face. “You need some girl time. Don’t even think about backing out. We’re going to do the strip thing at a club you can appreciate. Dove’s Rest is really classy.”
“For a strip club,” I shot her a hard smile. Still, it could have been worse. They had billiards in the back room and their food was good if deep-fried. My mother would approve.
The dress was the color of Horse’s eyes which I got to see widen when he caught me walking through the lobby on our way out.
I shouldn’t have felt that curl of delight in my stomach. It wasn’t exactly difficult to get the player’s attention. Still, the man knew how to look at a woman like it meant something. I’d fall for the sincerity of his gaze if I didn’t know him better. The spike heels wobbled under my feet. I needed to watch where I was going instead of paying attention to Horse. I’d never been a heels girl and these days I wore boots, sturdy ones. Still sexy, because what wasn’t sexy about heavy soles and thick tread? Now I was thinking about tires. I needed to check out a new set I was emailing our supplier about. They were ridiculously expensive, but would look so good on film, at least that’s how I’d spin it to Nix. A girl could always use bigger tires.
With my mind safely occupied, I let Minx chatter in the taxi while I daydreamed about tread and whitewalls.
At the club, the girls were already at the table, a respectable distance from the stage where a very classy stripper was performing a seriously acrobatic series of moves on the pole wearing what looked like a lizard skin bikini. They probably didn’t disinfect the pole between dancers. Why was I here again? Oh, right, because I was supposed to be the bi-sexual racer who appreciated a half-naked girl. To be perfectly honest, I was more turned on by engines than humans. Whatever that said about my sexuality. I’d stopped worrying about what other people thought a long time ago.
“You came!” Jezabel stood up and leaned over the table to grab my hands, probably because she knew I hated it. Germs. No, she couldn’t help the genuine enthusiasm she had for people she got close to. Being the two women on Nix’s team made it impossible not to know each other well. Not that there weren’t other women, but they were eye candy, not actual assets that carried weight other than in their bra. Not that candy wasn’t essential.
Speaking of, Candy flashed a mega watt smile at me beneath her tangle of blond curls. “I’m so glad you’re here!” Candy winked at me like I’d be interested in her good time. I’d never understood why straight girls would flirt with other women they thought were interested in women, but it happened a lot. Should I flirt back and make her uncomfortable?
I winked back and bit my lip just to watch how fast she backtracked. Her eyes widened and she blinked rapidly before focusing on her drink. Yeah, I had that affect on people. Now she was wondering how straight she really was. As far as I was concerned, hedonism wasn’t an identity.
“So glad,” Kia said, barely glancing at me as she sipped her drink. Her pink hair swung around her dark skin as she studied the men like they were appetizers she was considering. She had a voracious appetite, but I wasn’t on the menu. Small blessings. What was Kia doing here? She worked at the club Minx and Felicia worked at, but as far as I could tell, they didn’t get along.
“Good, good, good,” Felicia said rapidly as her warm brown eyes smiled at me along with her white teeth. She was very pretty, very sweet, and very friendly. Too friendly. She was always getting stuck with loser guys and I was the one she called when she needed help getting them out of her apartment. “Rapido, Jose! My friends need drinks!” She was probably the only one other than me who had kept her natural coloring. She claimed it was because her hair turned into a monster if she tried to do anything to it.
“Are you still with Pete?” I asked as I sat down in the seat next to Jezabel.
Felicia rolled her eyes. “Aiee, like he understands when I tell him we are not having sex because I’m on the period, you know? But he’s like, ‘my culture likes the lubrication,’ and I’m like…”
Jezabel put her hand over Felicia’s mouth. “Y’all, my culture just dropped dead from your use of the word ‘period’ in mixed company. Felicia, remember, you can talk about how good the sex itself is, but none of the gross stuff. We’ve had this conversation.”
Felicia pushed down Jez’s hand. “Y’all’s culture is based on riding cows, amiga. You’d think that you’d be more comfortable with natural woman things. Women are beautiful and strong. Menstruation is a sign of that. Do you think men could bear bleeding every month? They would all run into the ocean and drown the first time their penises started passing blood clots.”
We all groaned and started talking over her.
We were on our second round of drinks when I heard loud, masculine laughter and glanced over my shoulder. At the next table, a group of men were watching us instead of the stage. One of them, a blond with an impressive physique raised his glass at me.
I refocused on the story Minx was telling about this incredible shoe sale where her arch nemesis, Victoria, who worked with Minx and had the same shoe size, was trying to seduce the clerk to get him to give the magically comfortable heels Minx had on hold.
“Excuse me, but shouldn’t you be up on that stage?” The man stood at my shoulder. Should I ignore him or punch him in the balls? So many choices. I didn’t want to touch his balls, but I had my glass.
“She doesn’t know what to do with a pole,” someone else said.
I knew that low and sexy bedroom voice. Behind the tall blond was tall, dark, handsome Horse, leaning on an edge of a table with his drink, looking sexy and dangerous. It wasn’t the two female server’s fault that they hung on him like their knees went weak from being so close to so much sex appeal.
I stood up, shoving back the chair. His driver had ruined my tire. Now he wanted to ruin my girl’s night out? Not like I’d been particularly enjoying it, but he didn’t know that.
“That’s right, honey.” I smiled as much like Candy as I could and grabbed blonde’s tie. I yanked him nice and close. “You want to see me wrap around something long and hard?”
Horse laughed, teeth flashing in a grin of dangerous teeth above his cleft chin. “This is going to be painful.”
I glared at him. I was busy teaching this little preppy boy and his extremely appealing musk that not all women in Vegas were strippers. “Did someone make you the announcer? We don’t need a play-by-play.”
He raised his drink in the guy’s direction. “He doesn’t know the program, baby. He doesn’t know that some women aren’t coordinated with long and hard objects.”
Minx stood up beside me and tugged on my hand. I was holding onto the tie pretty tight. “Trix, why don’t we go to the bar? I’ll get you another drink. A twenty buck glass of whiskey, okay?”
Another guy from the blonde’s table came over like we had to be evenly matched. He had no idea. He looked at Minx like she was cheesecake. Mmm. Cheesecake.
“What’s your name? When do you go up onstage? Are they saving the best for last? Look at you. Red-hot and sassy. I love that dress. It would look really good on my floor.”
Minx’s smile got harder. “I’m not a stripper here.”
The dickwhistle’s face was disbelieving. “Well if you’re not going on stage tonight, I’ll pay for a private dance. I’d love to see what you have under that dress.”
Horse came over and put an arm around the guy. “The show’s up on the stage. These girls are just here to have a good time.”
“I can give her a good time,” he said with a smirk.
Horse looked him up and down the way he did to women only slightly more skeptically. “Mm hmm. I’m sure. You’re being disrespectful and ruining my entertainment. If you disrespect these women with allegations of stripping, like every well-put together piece of flesh is available for a price, I’m going to have to escort you out.”
Minx snorted and glared at him. “Yeah? Are you being an escort these days, Horse? Suits you. So strippers aren’t respectable, just whores with a steady paycheck?”
“I have nothing against whores.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her.
I let go of blondie’s tie and turned to glare at Horse. “You’re a piece of work.” I stepped towards the stranger who thought disrespect was okay if it happened in a strip club. “My friend’s a kindergarten teacher. This whole thing is my world, not hers. That dress? Mine. I only forced her into it because what I love to do off the job is come in and watch the show, you know, to get ideas for my own work. This isn’t my club, but I’m sure Joe won’t have a problem with a little spontaneous stripping.” I shoved past the guys and headed for the stage. What was I doing? Nothing good. I’d probably been drinking too much, too fast. As usual. Not as usual. I liked to keep it quiet. I’d known girl’s night was a bad idea. Here is was, my streak of crazy Italian I got from my mother along with my hair.
