It didn’t stop Casey or me from hissing at each other across the room in the middle of the night that we wouldn’t be mad if we woke up to a new sibling. However, it did stop us from fighting in front of him. We’d been good at keeping our rivalry between us and out of his line of sight. It was the least we could do for him. Protecting Dad might have been the only thing Casey and I agreed on.
“What’s the deal with this new merger of Cupid’s Arrows and Thornton Enterprises?” Dad leaned back in the booth and blew on his cup of coffee. “I didn’t think a jerk like Thornton’s son would want to get into the lingerie business.”
“Actually, he’s not a jerk.” I shifted in the booth, marveling over how one interaction with Storm could change so much about what I thought of him. “He’s actually kind of, I don’t know, interesting.”
Casey made wide eyes at me. “You’ve met Storm Thornton? Oh my God, Laila! Why didn’t you say something? He’s super hot. Like, stupid super hot. Sorry, Dad. Don’t you think he’s hot, Laila?”
Dad mumbled something into his coffee cup before taking a disgruntled sip.
I licked my lips. “Storm is attractive.”
“Attractive?” Casey sputtered with laughter. “That’s like saying the night sky is okay. Just attractive? Storm Thornton should be in movies, not board rooms.”
“Well, keep an eye out for the new Cupid campaign,” I said. “We did some shoots together.”
Casey gushed. “Can I crop you out of them and use them as the wallpaper on my phone?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Dad sighed. “Girls, can we talk about something else?”
“Sorry, Daddy,” Casey and I said in unison.
Our waitress, an aging woman with a plump midsection and frizzy hair under a hairnet, came to our table with a notepad and pen. She wore an expectant, hawkish stare, which she turned from one of us to the next as we gave her our food order. After she collected our menus and left the table, my father launched into a story about a huge undertaking at his mechanic shop with a customer who wanted to do a motor swap on an old Mustang.
I lost track of the conversation in less than five minutes.
Casey maintained the illusion of paying attention better than me. She listened to our father with a smile on her lips and her chin resting upon her knuckles. She nodded, taking cues from his voice as the cadence rose and fell with excitement or tribulation over the scope of the job. I couldn’t help but wonder how many times she’d indulged me like that when her mind was elsewhere.
After Dad spilled his guts about work, he excused himself to use the bathroom. He hadn’t been gone more than a minute when a shadow fell over the table.
I looked up into the yellowed face of a middle-aged man in a plaid jacket. He had a large red nose, with webs of tiny red veins snaking across his cheeks. He wore a ballcap over what I was sure was a balding head and flicked the rim.
“Look who it is,” the man said, planting his hands on his hips while he grinned at my little sister. “Hey, little lady. What’re you doing out around these parts? I thought you were leaving town? That’s why you had to leave early the other night. Too bad, too. You were the best girl in the joint. What I’d have paid to have you grinding in my lap with that ass of yours…” He trailed off and made a deeply unsettling sound in the back of his throat that got caught around phlegm. He coughed and swallowed. My stomach rolled.
Casey’s mouth fell open and stayed that way as she stared up at him. Her cheeks burned. My heart pounded in my chest.
What in the actual fuck was this about? How did this slimy guy know my baby sister? And what business did he have talking about her grinding her ass in his lap?
Casey’s eyes swept to me, and we shared an unspoken conversation.
Help, she said.
Leave it to me, I responded.
I got smoothly to my feet, not so subtly nudging the gentleman out of my way. “Excuse me, sir. I just have to slip past you.” I tucked my hair behind my ear, and that was when it happened—he recognized me.
“Holy shit,” he stammered, “are you Laila Hunt?”
I pretended to blush. “I am.”
Casey deflated with relief at the table behind me.
He begged me for an autograph. He didn’t have any paper on him, so he swept a napkin off our table for me to sign. I did.
He folded it neatly before tucking it in the pocket of his plaid jacket. “My wife won’t believe I met you. I can’t wait to show this to her and rub it in her face. Hold on.” His eyes widened and flicked back to my sister. “How do you two know each other? Are you… are you sisters?” He barked with triumphant laughter. “I got a fucking lap dance from Laila Hunt’s sister? There is a god!”
Ew. “Sir?” I forced a smile. “We’re here with our father and he’s going to be back any minute now. I’m sorry, but do you mind leaving us alone? My sister and I don’t need to sit here with our father talking about lap dances. You understand, don’t you?”
The man nodded eagerly. “Yes, of course! I understand. You’re a coy little thing, aren’t you?” He winked at my sister. “I’ll be back for you. And I’ll give you the best tip of your life. Thanks for the autograph.”
With that, he swept out of the diner. I watched him cross the parking lot and stop on the sidewalk, where he took his phone out of his pocket and snapped a picture of the napkin I’d signed.
I turned to Casey.
She buried her face in her hands and groaned.
“We’re going to talk about this as soon as I’m done with the Valentine’s Day show.” My head started to ache. I didn’t have time to deal with this right then. “For now, it can stay between us. But mark my words, Casey. If I think you’re in trouble, I’m telling Dad straight away. Dancing for money? What are you thinking?”
Casey picked at the peeling edge of the table. “Not all of us can be super models.”
CHAPTER 13
STORM
“Mr. Thornton! Put this on.”
“Mr. Thornton, come this way, please. No, don’t touch those. They’re props.”
“Mr. Thornton! Mr. Thornton!”
Everyone shouted instructions as I tried not to drown in the chaos that was the back room of the Cupid’s Arrows Times Square retail store. The building held significance as the original retail outlet for the company, back when it was just two sisters making lingerie for big, busty, average-sized women in their sewing room of the townhouse they shared. Back then, they had no idea just how big their company would become or how adored it would be by women who’d been pushed aside and overlooked when it came to sexy, stylish, trendy lingerie.
Now, every woman and her mother could not only fit into Cupid’s Arrows sizes, which came in every style and shade, but they could also find something as revealing as their hearts desired. Before purchasing the company I’d done a bit of research. Sure, said research had begun as me looking at beautiful women in lingerie online. But it led to better places.
I discovered that a lot of women—the majority of them, actually, seeing as how the average female size in America was a sixteen—couldn’t buy lingerie off the rack. They had to go to specialty stores in order to get the right cup size, which “straight sizing” hardly seemed to include, and if it did, it only came in basic, plain, unappealing designs.