Private Dancer (Club Volare Book 12)

by Chloe Cox

  “No,” Bette said. “There was someone else there, some other girl. And those cops from the other night, too. The ones who work for Mark. I overheard them. I don’t know what they’re going to make her do. I just…I freaked out. And I ran away.”

  She looked away from him then, wrapping her arms around herself.

  “You were smart to get out of there,” Cole said. “But you ran from me. When you saw the files. You thought I lied to you.”

  “No!” she said, suddenly fierce. “Just…that it was all coming crashing down, and I was scared of what Mark might do if he knew, and I couldn’t bear it if…”

  She looked away again.

  Damn.

  Bette Liffey was ashamed. While they stood there, she was being consumed with guilt and shame. And that wasn’t going to happen on Cole’s watch.

  He closed in quickly, bent down, scooped her up by the backs of her thighs, just under her ass. Their bodies came together like they knew what to do, like that was what they always should have done. In less than a second Cole had made contact, lifted her up, held her close while her legs wrapped around his waist and her lips hovered over his.

  Slowly, so slowly, he lowered down until she sat on his lap, straddling him in that mirrored room.

  He felt her breath on his face. Short, shallow, her chest shuddering, her thighs tensing around him. His cock thickening, aching, reaching for her. A tear fell down her face, but no more welled up behind it as she locked eyes with him, the way she knew he’d want her to.

  Instinct. He touched her face. She leaned into it.

  The connection between them blazed hotter than he remembered. Every damn time was like that. Every time.

  And he hadn’t trusted it because of his ex. Like Bette hadn’t trusted because of hers. So damn dumb. Cole had kept telling himself she was a liar, that this wasn’t real. It was fucking real. It was the only real thing he knew. Only Bette had shown him that he’d been frozen, that he’d let his past make him a smaller man. Only Bette had shown him that he wanted to be better. And if he’d recognized that in the beginning, he would have done some things differently.

  He wouldn’t have held back, for one. He’d have told her, shown her she could trust him by trusting her. Simple stuff. Instead he kept to himself, and left her guessing. And the more time they spent together, the higher the stakes got, and the harder it got for her to tell him. Because she loved him. He’d be a pretty piss-poor Dom if he couldn’t see that.

  No more. She was going to know it all.

  “Bette,” he said.

  She sighed, her eyes half lidded as his hands settled on her hips.

  “Look at me.”

  She obeyed. Always.

  “Bob Faulkner told you to come into the club, didn’t he? To come after me.”

  Sadly, she nodded. Not able to speak it. That was fine. Cole was strong enough to do it for both of them.

  “He wanted something he could use to discredit me or Club Volare, probably on Duvall’s orders,” Cole went on. “Something to discredit anything I found in my investigation. They didn’t have to use you. Did you know it was Duvall behind it?”

  Bette laughed bitterly. “No,” she said. “Maybe I didn’t want to believe it. I wouldn’t have…I wouldn’t have done it, if I’d known. I never would have come to the club.”

  Cole ran his hands up the sides of her body, the softness of her making him want to draw her close. Hold her. Never let her go.

  “Faulkner promised you custody of Lizzie in exchange?” Cole said.

  Bette nodded. “Not even that. He just told me I’d never get her back if I didn’t help him.” Then: “I guess it was always a lie, though. If he works for Mark.”

  “And he’s still the social worker assigned to her case.”

  “Yup. Doesn’t matter if he’s a corrupt, lying piece of crap. He can still screw us.”

  “Did Duvall know you were a sub?”

  Bette closed her eyes. When she opened them, she was almost smiling.

  “No,” she said. “I never shared that with him. With anybody.”

  “And then you found you liked it,” Cole said.

  “Yes,” she said. “And I found you.”

  His hands tightened on her hips, and his eyes burned.

  “They told me you were a dirty cop,” she said, her voice low. “I wanted to believe them. But…you’re you.”

  Something constricted in his throat. His chest. He wanted to explode out and up, run all the way to Bob Faulkner’s office and tear the man apart with his bare hands. Wanted to put Mark Duvall in the ground. Wanted to bury anyone who ever threatened this woman. And at the same time, he wanted to make love to her, and never stop.

  Dom control kept him present. It had never been this tough before. Maybe he hadn’t ever cared this much before.

  “How have you been holding them off?” he heard himself ask.

  “By avoiding Faulkner, mostly,” Bette said. “I was going to try to trap him, but then I saw those cops, and…”

  “Stay away from him,” Cole said immediately, forcefully. Bette blinked at him. “I’m going to take care of this. All of it.”

  “All of it?” she said, softly. “All of them? You’re one person, Cole, and Mark is…he’s everywhere.”

  Suddenly the song changed. Cole hadn’t been listening, hadn’t cared how many dances he was buying. The beat of some new thing he hadn’t ever heard before pulsed through the room, and Bette smiled ruefully.

  “I’m supposed to be dancing,” she said.

  “If you move a muscle,” Cole said, “I will take you right here.”

  “Not here,” Bette said.

  “No,” he said. “Not here. You belong in my bed.”

  Her eyes welled up again. “Can you really get Faulkner and Mark?”

  “I need evidence,” he said. “But I’m going to get it. I promise you that.”

  “They’ll hurt you.”

  “Let them try,” Cole said. “I’ve had a marriage end and my reputation torched, I’ve been threatened with murder and shot at. None of that did me in. But you. Look at me. You’re my last weak spot, Bette. And I like it that way. So it’s Mark Duvall who should be scared of me, Bette. And believe me when I tell you, I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Or to Lizzie. Never again.”

  “But—”

  “Not up for argument, sub,” he said. “Get out of town for the weekend. Stay with a friend.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “Lizzie—”

  “I’ll make sure Lizzie is ok,” he said. “I need you both safe. Both of you.”

  Bette took a long, shuddering breath, and let her fingers rest on his face. “You don’t know anything about me, Cole. I don’t deserve you.”

  “Bullshit,” Cole said. “I know who you are on an ordinary Wednesday night. Not here, not this club, not dealing with your ex. Just you. That’s the real you, and that’s the woman I want. That’s the woman I’m going to protect. That’s the woman I love, Bette, and you’re going to get used to that idea, too.”

  Bette stared down at him, stunned. Like she didn’t quite believe it. Like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like a rescue would look at him.

  Fuck that.

  He kissed her. He kissed her hard, and hot, his hands digging into the soft flesh of her thighs as her hips ground into him. With a growl he launched them both off the red leather bench, standing with her wrapped around him, his mouth devouring hers. In another second he had her pinned against the mirrored door, her breasts crushed against his chest, her heat against his painfully erect cock. Damn the cameras. His woman would know how he felt.

  When he was done, she was breathless. Limp. Not wanting to stand.

  She’d have to stand on her own for just a little bit longer.

  “Remember your orders, sub,” he whispered. “Stay low, stay safe. Wait to hear from me. You’re not alone anymore.”

  Cole allowed himself one last look at her eyes.

 
And then he went to work.

  30

  Bette eased her car to a stop in the darkness, not wanting to spoil the silence. The Palmers’ neighborhood was full of families who had been in the same house for generations, lots of them with kids and grandkids and babies. None of them would enjoy being disturbed by a woman half-crazed with love and worry at three in the morning.

  She just couldn’t help herself. After her shift ended, all she wanted to do was go check on Lizzie. See her little sleeping face. Read her a story. Tuck her in.

  That had been after the high of Cole’s appearance had worn off, when reality started to close in.

  God. Cole.

  He had swooped into the club like a…like a dream, honestly. Like a fantasy. And then he’d told her everything she’d ever wanted to hear.

  He’d told her he loved her.

  Bette still didn’t know if she could bring herself to believe it could all work out like that. Sitting alone in her car at three in the morning, staking out the house where her little sister was in foster care, not having a clue what to do next, except that the best man she’d ever known had told her he would take care of it. And she believed him. She trusted him.

  She just didn’t trust the rest of the world. Not after what she’d seen in Faulkner’s office. The fear in that other woman’s voice had stayed with her. No matter how far she drove in the middle of the night, she couldn’t outrun that memory.

  She couldn’t outrun how responsible she felt.

  Bette sighed, and put the car in gear again. There was no point hanging outside the Palmers’ place like a crazy person. None of that would make her feel less responsible for everything.

  Bette still remembered those dinners and cocktail parties with politicians and investors, where Mark had paid so much attention to what she’d been wearing, to how she comported herself. He’d dressed her up like a Stepford Wife, like someone Bette had never been and would never be, and she’d known how to play the role, how to be polite. She’d wanted to be supportive. Mark cared so very much about appearances.

  But it had all been fake. Bette would never forget the look on Mark’s face when she’d confronted him about his behavior. About Lizzie finding all that cocaine. She’d yelled at him, expecting him to be ashamed of himself.

  He’d laughed at her. He’d told her exactly how stupid she was.

  And that was when she’d started to realize it had all been lies. Every moment. Every kiss. Every pretense at humanity.

  And then she’d taken Lizzie and gotten the hell out. She hadn’t wondered whether Mark was hurting anyone, and she hadn’t wanted to tell anyone the truth about why she left, because she felt like such a fool. In retrospect, not telling anyone might have saved her life.

  Because if Mark was paying off dirty cops to pressure women into God-knows-what, he was capable of a lot more than bribing a social worker, or challenging Bette for custody. Like maybe he had actually had people murdered. And Bette had just…let him get on with it. She hadn’t done a thing to stop him. To expose him.

  And now that poor woman…

  “Good Lord, Liffey, you are making yourself crazy,” she muttered.

  By the time she pulled in to her dingy little apartment complex, the first wisps of light were visible on the horizon. She was bone tired. And her apartment was all wrong. Lonely. No Lizzie, sleeping peacefully. No Cole, even though he’d never been there.

  Just that sense of being at everyone else’s mercy.

  The only comfort in the whole world was the memory of Cole’s voice.

  “Remember your orders, sub.”

  Stay low, stay safe. Her Dom was going to handle it.

  And that was the only damn reason she slept at all. Unfortunately, only a few hours later, her phone buzzed her awake. Bette wasn’t sure it was real at first, in a dreamy haze about Cole, about submission. About a happy family.

  Then it buzzed again, and she groaned, rolled over, and checked it.

  And the whole world stopped spinning.

  “You have missed several appointments, Ms. Liffey. Be here in thirty minutes or I send my recommendation to the judge today. It won’t be what you’re hoping for.”

  From: Asshole. That was how she’d saved Bob Faulkner’s number in her phone after the last text. Somehow it didn’t lighten the mood.

  Because there was no mistaking what he meant: you will lose Lizzie forever. Of course he hadn’t come right out and said it, because that would make things too easy. If he had, maybe that would be the evidence Cole needed. Maybe.

  But no. This had plausible deniability. Faulkner was a bag of slime on legs, but he wasn’t a stupid bag of slime.

  Oh God. This is real. This is now.

  Bette shot up in bed. Thirty minutes was just enough time to get dressed and get over to Faulkner’s office. Not much time for anything else. She grabbed at her phone, her fingers suddenly tense, dialing out the number by heart while she scrabbled for clothing.

  “The subscriber you have reached is not in service. Please leave a message after the tone.”

  “Fuck! Cole!” she stopped, stared at the phone. Cursing at it wouldn’t help. And she had to leave. “Call me. It’s Faulkner. I have to go over there.”

  She looked at the headphones on top of her dresser, where she’d left them.

  “I have to do something,” she said.

  Cole parked right in front of the friendly-looking house this time, partially blocking the driveway. Last time he’d been all the way down the block, watching as Mark Duvall got shut down by a little girl.

  That had been Lizzie. He knew he’d liked her, even before he knew she was Bette’s little sister. Kid had spunk. She was a little tomboy, the type to wear jeans under a tutu and think nothing of it.

  And Mark Duvall was never going to get near her again.

  Cole rang the bell and waited, checking his phone in the meantime. No reception. Damn. He eyed the big electrical towers spiraling towards the sky not a block away. This whole neighborhood was an unreliable dead zone, probably from interference from the towers. Kept property values down, and kept families in the homes a long time, but it had its disadvantages.

  “Can I help you?”

  It was Joe Palmer who answered the door, drying his hands on a dishtowel. The gray haired man didn’t look happy to see Cole. Didn’t look trusting, either.

  Good. Cole didn’t have time to waste.

  “Yeah,” Cole said, holding up his badge. “You can get out of town.”

  “Who are you?” Joe said, taking Cole’s badge for a closer look.

  “Name’s on the ID,” Cole said. “What you want to know is that I’m a friend of Bette Liffey’s.”

  “A friend, huh?” Joe said. Unmoved. “And a friend of Lizzie’s too, no doubt. I have never met a young girl with so many friends in law enforcement, I’ll tell you that.”

  Dammit. Mascolo and Turnbull had probably already come around, sometime after Mark.

  “Two guys, plug ugly, mean looking,” Cole said. “NOLA cops?”

  Joe said nothing.

  “They work for Mark Duvall,” Cole said.

  “And how do we know you don’t?” Joe said.

  Cole almost smiled. He liked Joe Palmer.

  “You don’t,” he said. “But look at my face. Look at me.”

  Joe Palmer’s milky eyes landed on Cole’s, and held steady.

  “I love Bette Liffey,” Cole said. Simple, because it was true. And that wasn’t all. “That girl in there is her family. And I’m going to protect them both. I promise you that.”

  Palmer looked at him hard for a good ten seconds. Then the older man sighed.

  “We’re pretty fond of those girls, too,” he said.

  “Good,” Cole said. “Then you want them safe. I need you to get out of town for the weekend. This is a key to my friend’s place out in the Garden District. Nice old mansion, old family. You can look them up if you want.”

  Cole dug into his suit pocket, got out the k
ey Holt had given him to Simone’s family home, along with the handwritten address card and invitation that Simone had insisted come with it. The Delavignes were the kind of family who made headlines doing nothing at all, and Simone and Holt had moved into the Garden District house a few months ago. It was never the type of offer Cole thought he’d be in a position to make, but apparently he ran in rarefied circles now. Joe Palmer looked as skeptical as Cole would expect, but he took the key and the card.

  “They’re expecting you,” Cole said. “Or go somewhere else, somewhere no one knows you. Weekend trip to the Mississippi coast, maybe. Just go. And I’ll make sure it’s safe for you to come back.”

  This time when Palmer looked at him, Cole could see the seriousness of the situation dawning in the older man’s eyes. There was a beat.

  “Jesus,” Palmer muttered.

  There might have been more, but they were interrupted.

  “Are you a friend of Bette’s?”

  The voice came from behind Palmer, in the dim light of the house. Cole didn’t need to see to know who it belonged to. That voice, confident and shy at the same time, was definitely a Liffey.

  “Yes I am,” Cole said. “My name’s Cole. And I bet you’re Lizzie. She’s told me a lot about you, kiddo.”

  “She has?” Lizzie said. She was watching Cole intently.

  Cole grinned. “Of course she has. You’re her favorite person,” he said.

  Lizzie smiled then, and it was like the sun coming up. “Do you want to see my drawings?” she asked.

  Joe Palmer sighed again, a hand going to Lizzie’s head protectively. “All right, you better come in. I’ll get my wife.”

  Lizzie didn’t wait. She darted forward and grabbed Cole’s hand by the finger, pulling him behind her as she led him through the hall into a cozy-looking living room. On the floor were a bunch of markers, crayons, pencils, and a single sketchpad surrounded by many versions of what looked like the same drawing, over and over again.

  A house. Red roof, red window dressings, blue walls. A yard, a swing set, flowers. Two yellow-haired figures, one taller than the other, holding hands, while a dog sat in the flower garden.