<Job offer is still on the table.>
<I don’t want anything from you. >
<Thought you wanted better pay.>
<Leave me alone.>
<Still scared? Come to Shakedown.>
<I won’t.>
<You will. You love money.>
Oh, how she wished daggers of ice tipped in venom could penetrate the screen and impale his cold heart. She’d waited three days to answer that last bit. Petty, but the delay was necessary given the bastard’s tone, his attempted reverse psychology, and his obvious wish to destroy her life. He had to be responsible for her sudden dismissal from Talman's. She'd make him pay.
She charged up to the door powered by the tornado that had been whirling inside her over the last three days. That ever-present, achy thudding in her heart she’d lived with for the last few years had morphed into something more useful—fury. Sadness had weighed her down for far too long. At least anger fed her courage and would prompt her to act. Now, every time her mind raised a mental stop sign, she punched it back down. Trick would make restitution and return her trust fund if it was the last thing she accomplished in life.
Old movie poster shadow boxes were tacked to the brick walls by the club entrance. Dancing girls, an elephant balancing on a pedestal, and a mermaid, all a little faded behind the scratched glass, cheerily stared back at her. “Not a strip club, huh?” As if the poster pin-up girls smiling at her would answer.
Rachel slung open the door and stepped into blackness. She paused just inside the silent club to let her eyes adjust. As the interior's details crystallized, her first thought was that she'd stepped onto a movie set.
“Well, this is way nicer than I imagined.”
White tablecloths draped dozens of small tables crammed into the center of the room. Half-moon–shaped booths in dark green, tufted velvet lined the far left wall. A long, polished oak bar with a gleaming brass foot rail ran the length of the club to her right.
A huge man with a goatee, a scar riding high on his right cheek, his muscles poured into a gray Henley, leaned on the bar's far end over a newspaper spread across the surface. “Applications are at the end of the bar. Auditions start tomorrow.” The paper crackled as he turned a page.
“Audition? No, I'm looking for Trick Masters.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “Who's asking?”
She crossed her arms. “The woman he stole three million dollars from.”
The man straightened, a faint smile inching up his lips. “I'll get him for you, Rachel.”
“How did you know my name?”
“He said if the most beautiful woman in the world walks in and demands a job, her name is Rachel.”
Great. So Trick believed she was a foregone conclusion? Think again, buddy.
While the guy strode across the floor and ducked behind a curtain on the other side of the floor, ostensibly to find Trick, she pulled out her cell phone to see if Jay had returned any of the dozen messages she'd left in the last two days. He hadn't.
She hit his number, and again it went straight to voice mail.
“Jay, are you ever going to call me back? Like I said in my last six million messages, The Betrayer is in Baltimore. Don't they ever let you make calls? A text at least?” She almost said, “Oh, and I've been fired,” but why worry him? She scanned around the room, walked in a tight circle to take in the entirety of the space. “And you will not believe where I am.”
For shits, grins, and giggles if nothing else, Jay needed to come back and see where Trick, once the legal darling of the Washington, D.C. investment scene, had landed. She shook her head as she took in the stage, framed in heavy, red velvet drapes, empty except for a tall microphone stand in the center. Lights aimed at the stage dangled from girders in the ceiling. At least no dance cages or stripper poles were in view, and the scent of orange blossoms and cedar hung heavy in the air rather than the usual stale beer and sweat smell of most strip joints—or what she'd imagined they'd smell like. A rustling behind her caused her to kill the one-sided call.
“Rachel.”
Stupid shivers ran up her spine at hearing Trick's baritone. She swiveled to come face to face with the man, The Betrayer, ready to do battle, something she should have done long ago. Hell, she should have started the day she returned from Chile. She should have driven straight to Lorton prison and demanded an audience rather than lie on her stepbrother’s sofa, crying like a baby, wondering how her perfect man, the one who’d swept her off her feet in record time, had promised her everything, could have done this to them. Thank god for Jay, who took her in after everything went down.
Today she wasn't hiding and wishing for something that had never been real. No more tears ever again. She put as much steel into her backbone as possible. “How dare you. First, you get me demoted to hostess and then fired? And have the nerve to force me into another job. Here?” She threw her arm toward the stage. 'I'd rather pick up garbage.”
He had the gall to raise an eyebrow. “Pretty generous on my part, I'd say.”
“Generous?” She chuffed. “You stole my money and then want to gloat as I work a menial hourly job? You humiliated me once. You won't do it again.” He'd accused her of being afraid. Afraid her ass. She strode forward until there were just six inches between them and jabbed her finger on his hard pec. “How did you find me?”
As she recalled, Trick did nothing accidentally. Of course, what did she really know about him? Yet no way was his presence at Talman's a coincidence. She jabbed him with her finger again for good measure.
He grabbed her wrist. “Since you can't stop touching me—” he cocked his head, “—let’s make this private. Office.”
“Office?”
He pulled her behind a curtain into a long, cinder block-lined hallway. “Desk and everything.” He opened a door and gestured her inside.
“Nice digs.” The large mahogany desk and oil paintings on the wall were unexpected, but then again, he had three million somewhere at his disposal, didn't he? “This Oriental carpet real? Probably. You can obviously afford to pay restitution.”
As soon as he clicked the door behind them, he strode to his desk and perched on the edge. “I was wrongly convicted. I don't have your money. I never did.” He scratched his chin, the sound of fingers on stubble making her lower belly tingle in sexual interest, damn him.
“Bullshit.” She stepped closer and stabbed him on the pec. That woodsy aftershave of his once more rose up and clouded her senses. He smelled too good, which she should not be noticing.
He gave a snort, an annoying amused sound. “Stop poking me. Try being a grownup.” He grasped her wrist—hard.
“You find this funny? Screw you.”
“If you’re offering, I might” —his gaze ran up and down her body— “consider it. You did excel in that area.”
She did a double-take. “Forget about it.”
“Gladly.” He stood, and his grip turned vicious, driving her back a step. “I make a habit of avoiding women who set me up and then abandon me, sweetheart.”
“Abandon you? You were convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to jail, and don't call me sweetheart.”