Pinups and Possibilities

by Melinda Di Lorenzo

  “Let me ask you something else then…who’s more dangerous? Cohen? Or the man you’ve got at home?”

  This time I recognized the tone. He was jealous. Or something like it.

  That’s ridiculous. He’s just got something to prove.

  “I thought we already decided not to have the size-doesn’t-matter conversation.” I managed to keep my tone light.

  He laughed, and I tried not to be affected by the rich sound of it.

  “Can we talk about something else? Anything but Cohen?” I asked.

  “I thought we were talking about you, actually.”

  “I want to talk about myself even less than I want to talk about your boss.”

  “Fine. What’s your boyfriend like?”

  Dammit. I needed him to stop asking me questions.

  “You don’t know when to stop, do you?”

  He shrugged. “Dogging people helps me get the job done. Have you been dancing long?”

  “You think that’s cute?”

  “What?”

  “Teasing me about what I do for work?”

  “I wasn’t teasing.”

  “Maybe not.” But you’re not asking about my boyfriend anymore, either, and that’s my real goal. “But just in case, I’ll answer your next set of questions in advance. Yes, I make good money. No, I’m really not a hooker, and yes, I realize that my body is a temple. Or has an expiry date. Or whatever it is that you think justifies telling me how to live my life.”

  “I was just trying to be nice.” He sounded genuinely offended.

  Perfect.

  “By stealing my phone and my money and forcing me into a car against my will and then asking me personal questions about my life?”

  My exaggerated defensiveness finally seemed to strike a nerve. He pressed the clutch and jammed the gearshift from fourth to third, accelerating more quickly than could possibly be safe.

  “Honestly, Polly,” he said over the roar of the engine. “I’m not the one who ripped off Cohen Blue. I tend to pay my debts on time. I was trying to take it easy on you because you’re just a girl—”

  “Just a girl?” I cut in.

  He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “But it’s clearly backfiring. So if you don’t mind, I’ll stop talking altogether and you can stop talking, too, and we’ll drive until I’m too tired to see, then we’ll have a rest and drive some more.”

  I opened my mouth, but I didn’t get a chance to call him out for his tirade. He shifted the Mustang back up to fourth gear and cranked the stereo before I could say another word.

  Chapter Seven

  Painter

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  For the past five miles or more, the girl—Polly, as she insisted on being called—had been crossing and uncrossing her legs every thirty seconds.

  “Hmmm?”

  She looked up at me as if she’d forgotten I was there. That irritated me even more than the repeated movements. I nodded toward her legs and she flushed.

  “Sorry,” she muttered.

  I sighed and very nearly reciprocated her apology. Then she did it again. I gritted my teeth. It wasn’t so much the shifting motion that was bothering me. I was sure as hell used to unruly passengers and had been subjected to far worse. Kicks in the shins. Kicks in the balls. Hell, once I’d even been kicked in the teeth. What was really getting to me was that with every recross, her dress hiked up a little further, exposing a tantalizing amount of leg. She pulled the hem down a few times, but it was already back to midthigh. I was having a hard time keeping my eyes on the road. It amazed me, really, that she could elicit such a visceral response in me. Especially since all it took was a little bit of unintentionally exposed leg.

  From a girl you’ve already slept with, I growled at myself.

  She moved again, and the lacy bottom of her dress crept up another two inches.

  “Stop that!”

  She turned to glare at me. “I can’t.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “If you must know, I have to pee. Badly.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “I’m not stopping somewhere populated enough for you to make a run for it.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask you to. I wouldn’t even have brought up the fact that I have to go if you weren’t so short-tempered about my discomfort.”

  “Are you trying to set me off?” I demanded.

  “No.”

  Something in her expression made me think she was at least a little bit happy about my agitated state, though. So I couldn’t resist an urge to knock the gleam out of her eye. I slammed on the brakes and swerved across two lanes to come to a crooked stop on the side of the dusty highway.

  To her credit, Polly didn’t shriek as her seat belt flew open and she shot sideways, her bottom sliding across the centre console. To my own credit, I didn’t react as her dress flew up and half of her soft, perfectly formed ass landed in my lap. I only exhaled a little sharply as she lifted herself away, exposing the curve of her underwear.

  “Make it quick,” I commanded. “And trust me when I say this is the last place you want to be stranded.”

  I nodded at the dry expanse of sandy horizon. It was too dark to see much, but I knew it was dotted here and there with a few bushy plants and not much more.

  “Tarantulas,” I whispered.

  Polly gave me a dirty look. She didn’t comment as she let herself out of the Mustang. Her emphatic door slam said it all.

  I turned away politely as her head dipped out of view, then grabbed my cell phone from the glovebox. I typed in a quick text to Cohen Blue.

  En route. J. Duncan in hand.

  There was a delay as the message took its time going through, then came the reply that made me grind my teeth.

  Good work.

  He sounded like he was patting a schoolboy on the head. Next, he’d be handing me a gold star and smacking my hand with a smiley-face stamp.

  I flipped through the radio stations, irrationally frustrated that I couldn’t find a good song. I glanced out the window in Polly’s general direction. I could just see the top of her hair.

  Why is she taking so long?

  I strummed my fingers on the dashboard in time with a tune I didn’t know. When it ended and Polly still didn’t come back to the car, my impatience got the better of me. I swung open my door and hopped out.

  “Pull up your underwear! I’m coming over there!”

  I stalked to the other side of the Mustang just in time to see Polly stand up, stumble backward, and land on her backside with an “oomph”. She stared at me, guilt and worry mingling on her face.

  What the hell?

  She scooted away from my puzzled gaze. As she moved, a cell phone clattered across the ground. Her expression immediately made more sense. She reached for the phone, but I was faster.

  In two quick steps my booted foot was on top of it. In one more I was crushing it.

  “No!”

  I whipped back to Polly. Her voice was full of pain, and so was her face. I ignored the tug on my heart when I spied unshed tears in her eyes.

  “What did you tell them?”

  “What did I tell who?”

  I yanked her to her feet.

  “The fucking cops!” I yelled.

  “I didn’t call the police.”

  “Right.”

  She looked me straight in the face and shook her head. It annoyed me that I wanted to believe her. I broke eye contact first.

  “If you hadn’t stomped on my phone, you could’ve checked,” she pointed out after a moment.

  “Why didn’t you call them?”

  “It didn’t seem important.”

  I threw my hands up in exasperation. “Who did you call then?”

  “If you hadn’t stomped on my phone,” she said again, this time with a raised eyebrow. “You could’ve checked that, too.”

  I grabbed her by the wrist, and when she tried to pull away, I held on even tighter. I could feel her pulse racing
through her arteries and throbbing against my fingers. She looked down at my hands. They were rough, calloused and tanned, and they stood out from her starkly fair skin. I rolled her arm over so I could stroke the tender spot between her palm and her wrist. She didn’t move, except to gasp when a trail of goosebumps followed my thumb along the line of her arm.

  At the sound of air leaving her mouth, my eyes jerked up to take in the sight of her parted lips. They were still red from the make-up she’d worn during her performance.

  What colour is under that deep, unnatural hue? It was too dark last night to tell for sure.

  I had to know.

  A compulsion.

  It was the first time I’d ever been able to put an actual, physical sensation to the word.

  It was almost overwhelming.

  I took a step forward, closing the gap between us. Almost became must, and I reached up with my free hand. I was fully prepared to wipe away the lipstick so I could see what was underneath. Before I could, her own arm came up and pressed against my chest. Her palm was flat on my skin. I stiffened because I couldn’t stop myself.

  Not on my skin, I corrected myself. On my shirt. There’s a whole layer of fabric between us.

  I still had to fight off a flinch. When I shuffled my feet, her fingers slipped between the top two buttons, and suddenly her skin was touching mine.

  My reaction wasn’t defensive, as I thought it would be. Instead, it felt good.

  I told myself it was because it had been so long since I let anyone near that part of my body and all the suffering that went along with it, but the truth was that it was her.

  I had to stifle a carnal moan that threatened to escape from somewhere deep within my throat.

  Jesus.

  Heat spread like wildfire from my chest to my groin. I closed my eyes and savoured the feeling. She twisted the top button out of its hole and traced her nails along my collarbone. I held myself very still. I was sure that if I allowed myself to respond, I’d have her pressed against the Mustang in thirty seconds or less. I’d pull that dress over her head. I’d push myself into those subtly enticing underwear and from there, I wouldn’t be able to control my actions anymore.

  “Sixty dollars,” she breathed into my ear.

  “Huh?”

  “The going rate.”

  “For what?”

  “For a lap dance.”

  My eyes flew open and I jerked away. She shrugged.

  “In fact, eighty is the going rate at Tangerines,” she told me. “So sixty is a steal of a deal.”

  I was tempted—for a very long second—to reach for my wallet so I could pull out three crisp twenties and then tuck them into her ample cleavage.

  Just to see what she’d do, I told myself. Not because I need her in my lap.

  Instead I sighed and stated coldly, “I don’t have to pay for it.”

  She grinned, but the smile didn’t quite touch her eyes. “No. Quite the opposite.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Oh, come on. Cohen more or less paid you to sleep with me.”

  Her statement couldn’t have pissed me off more. “He sure as hell didn’t.”

  “Tell yourself what you need to.”

  My jaw tightened as I forced myself to head off the argument. “I distinctly recall taking away your cell phone.”

  She shrugged again. “I happen to have a second one. Or I did have one until a minute ago.”

  “Why?”

  “One for business, one for pleasure.”

  “Which one was which?” She didn’t answer my question, so I tried again. “Where was the second one hidden? Just for future reference.”

  “Future reference? Are you planning on kidnapping another innocent woman sometime soon?”

  “My employer never sends me after innocent women,” I replied.

  “But he sends you after innocent men?” Polly countered.

  “He never sends me after innocent people,” I amended.

  “How can you be sure?” she wanted know.

  “Because in the end…they all pay up.”

  She snorted. “And I suppose I will, too?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back in the car.”

  “And if I do mind?”

  “Then I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve. And all of them start with a roll of duct tape.”

  She tilted her head to the side curiously and from the set of her mouth, I thought she might be trying to cover a laugh. I guided her back to the Mustang and depressed the lock emphatically before closing her door.

  I turned to her once more before we moved off.

  “Why didn’t you call for help?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Maybe you’re not the only one who feels the need to do things below board.”

  “Not the words of an innocent woman,” I pointed out, then after a pause, added, “You were calling him weren’t you? The size-doesn’t-matter guy at home. Should I expect him to come after us?”

  She smiled sadly and shook her head. “I just called a friend.”

  I suppressed a surge of irrational jealousy. “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  Why would she?

  Get a grip, Painter.

  “What did you say to your friend?” I asked.

  “That I was going to be late coming home from work.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Late?”

  Her mouth set in a determined line. “Did you really think I was just going go back to Cohen without a fight?”

  “Try to escape,” I warned grimly. “And I’ll crush more than your phone.”

  I cranked the radio and pulled out onto the highway once more.

  Chapter Eight

  Polly

  My brief conversation with Misty buoyed my spirits slightly. I’d made it clear to her that I couldn’t tell her exactly what was going on, but at least I knew she would keep Jayme occupied. It bought me precious time. Which was good, because Painter had turned up the radio and left it playing at an obnoxious volume for two hours as he drove through the pitch-black.

  I was tempted to bait him back in to a conversation. My mind was ripe with clever retorts about the duct tape and his threat to hurt me, the perfect distraction from my worries, but the music was too loud for me to utter a single one of them.

  Not a thug, my ass.

  But if I was being honest with myself, I had to admit that I felt bad for goading him on, for mocking him about a lap dance. Even if I had done it to save myself. His skin felt good, pressed against mine. His collarbone under my fingers was sexy as hell. My heartbeat quickened as I thought about placing my fingers anywhere near it. And the heat of his lips over mine had been almost unbearable.

  My need to say something finally got the better of me.

  “Seventeen months,” I said softly without looking at him.

  I didn’t think he would hear me, but at that exact moment the radio cut out and the car was filled with nothing but the sound of my voice. It was quiet and so nearly intimate, and it did nothing to ease the tension I was feeling.

  “Sorry?” he said.

  “That’s how long I’ve been dancing at Tangerines.”

  Rock music blared out again, and he reached over to turn it off.

  “You’re good at it,” he offered.

  I kept my tone light. “Would you be able to tell if I wasn’t?”

  “Probably not,” he admitted. “But your style is different.”

  “Different than what? Your average stripper?”

  “Did you go to school for it?”

  “Where at? The Learn-to-Strip University?” I tried to joke and sounded bitter instead as thoughts of my mother and her training in classical ballet surface. “Yeah, I majored in not losing my panties before the first act and minored in the effective application of pasties.”

  He chuckled. “If you hate it, why are you doing it?”

  “Family business,” I muttered, t
hen immediately wished I hadn’t.

  His eyes swung my way, rested on me curiously for a beat, and then went back to the windshield wordlessly.

  “Aren’t you going to ask?” I said.

  “Wasn’t sure if you wanted me to,” he replied.

  His dismissive tone sparked my irritation.

  “I didn’t want you to,” I snapped.

  “All right.”

  I was silent for a minute, then sighed. After all, I’d initiated the conversation to start out with.

  “Fine. Ask.”

  “How is it the family business?” He somehow managed to sound dutiful and sincerely interested at the same time.

  “My mom was a professional dancer.”

  “Was?”

  My shrug was far more casual than the emotions tumbling around in my heart. “It’s not a money-making job. And she had addiction issues. Gambling first. Cohen was her bookie. When she got in over her head, she danced in one of his clubs to make ends meet. It was only a short jump from there to drugs and before long…you know Cohen, so you can imagine how it went.”

  “So does that mean Cohen is a family business, too?”

  I stiffened. “No. Everything my mother was…everything she became…I’m not her. And whatever she had going with Cohen sure as hell isn’t on me.”

  He eased off the gas just a little and glanced at me again. “So this is your mother’s debt?”

  My mouth twisted. “If I tell you it is…will you let me go?”

  There was the briefest hesitation before he answered. “Would you lie to me to make me let you go?”

  “Yes.”

  Shit.

  I was failing miserably at helping myself.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you aren’t very good at small talk?” he asked.

  “I have no reason to be,” I stated.

  “Everyone has a reason to play nice sometimes.”

  “Ellis—my boss—doesn’t like us to talk to the clients.”

  “Ah. That’s probably for the best,” he said.

  “It keeps us safe.”

  “What about when you’re not at work?”

  I tensed again. “What about it?”

  “Don’t you have to be polite to people? At the post office or the grocery store or the place where you buy your dresses?”