“Fine. We went shopping.”
“I’m paying you to shop?”
The remark made her uneasy. Her gaze shifted away and it took a moment for her smile to form. “Great job, isn’t it?” Then she shrugged, her tiger stripes rippling. “You can’t dance without the right clothes and shoes.”
He doubted most men would agree with her. The flashy colors and see-through fabrics were nice, but they weren’t necessary. Every man he knew would be just as turned on by a woman wearing a white cotton bra and panties. In fact, Amanda, with her creamy golden skin, would look incredible in her underwear. There was something more intimate about imagining her in the lingerie she wore for herself, not for tips.
Wishing Harry would turn the AC to frigid, Rick set the last drink on her tray. “We never settled on an amount. How about one night’s house fee per lesson?”
Her eyes widened slightly. One night on the stage cost each dancer seventy-five dollars. Anything over that, they got to pocket. Some girls actually went in the hole on slow nights, but weekends always made up for it.
“All right,” she agreed. She picked up the tray and started away, then turned back. “You should have asked first. I would have settled for twenty-five, thirty bucks.” She gracefully strolled away, tray balanced on one delicate hand.
When she was out of earshot, he murmured, “You would have sold yourself cheap, darlin’.”
She was a beautiful woman. Smart. Capable. She could do anything she wanted, yet for twelve years she’d settled for this. Why?
He’d learned early in his career that asking why people did the things they did was an exercise in futility. Why did a seventeen-year-old honor student decide the profit margin versus risk in selling drugs made it a good choice? Why did a gangbanger open fire on a crowd of strangers—kids, no less—as he drove down the street?
For the most part, Rick had lost interest in the why. His focus these days was on delivering the consequences to people who broke the law.
But he couldn’t help but wonder about Amanda’s why. Why was she a stripper? Why hadn’t she pursued a more respectable career? Why wasn’t she married and raising kids? Why was she spending her nights in a place like this with people like him?
The club had about two customers too many to rank as a slow night. Rick made drinks whose recipes he could now recite in his sleep, watched the customers and talked for a minute here or there with the dancers. It was casual conversation—drink orders, a little flirting. You have any plans when you get off? Want to join me for dessert? Unless he made an effort to see the girls outside the club—too risky—he had no real chance to get information from them. It was tough to subtly say, “A margarita on the rocks, a whiskey sour and, say, do you remember a girl named Lisa who used to work here?”
That was why Julia was coming onboard. Dancers talked to each other. Hopefully, they would talk to her about Lisa Howard, Tasha Wiley and DinaBeth Jones.
Three dancers, all having appeared on the main stage at Almost Heaven, all disappeared over a three-month period pretty much without a trace until parts from Tasha’s and DinaBeth’s cars had turned up in a chop shop on the northern side of Atlanta. The chop shop happened to belong to Roosevelt Hines, who also owned Almost Heaven and its four sister clubs.
Rosey, he called himself, and no one laughed. He stood six-six, weighed three hundred pounds and didn’t give a damn about anyone but himself. He’d started with petty theft when he was ten and worked his way up the food chain. The strip clubs were the most legitimate of his businesses. He said he liked his girls, claimed he kept the bad stuff away from them.
Would Lisa, Tasha and DinaBeth agree?
“Hey, Calloway, time for a break.”
He glanced up to find Chad, bouncer and relief bartender, standing at the other end of the bar, flirting with a little blonde named Dawn. Rick had walked in on them in the storeroom his first night on the job, in the men’s room the next night. He’d seen enough to make a point of always knocking first.
There were dancers on all three stages, the budget committee was having a good time and there was no sign of Amanda. On her own break? Where Rick would have normally headed straight out back, this time he detoured past the dressing room. The door was always open; there was no false modesty among the dancers.
The room looked like an explosion of colors, leathers and metals. Bright lights circled the makeup mirrors and cosmetics spilled across the counters. Lockers lined one wall, holding the mundane jeans, T-shirts and running shoes that turned exotic dancers back into everyday young women.
Only one of the chairs in front of the mirrors was occupied, by a gorgeous Jamaican woman who was adding a coat of something to already-thick lashes. “Hey, sweetie,” she greeted him. “You lookin’ for someone in particular, sugar? Or will Eternity do?”
She could ask that question of a thousand guys and get nothing but affirmation from every one of them. He grinned apologetically. “I wanted to ask Amanda something.”
Her dark gaze narrowed. “Amanda, huh. I was betting Monique would be more your type. If Amanda’s not out front, she’s in study hall.”
“Study hall?”
“That empty little room near the back door that no one ever uses.”
“Thanks.” He took a step out the door, then stopped. “Which one is Monique?”
“Brunette. Short hair. Triple D’s.”
Oh, yeah. There was a time when she would have been his type. A time all of them would have suited. “I have a girlfriend.” It was a lie, but it sounded good.
Better to him than to Eternity, if her look was anything to judge by. “You think all them guys out there don’t, chico?” she murmured as she turned back to her makeup.
Rick’s jaw tightened as he followed the narrow hall to the rear of the building. He knew better than to equate a relationship with fidelity. His father had had a girlfriend or three, along with a wife. The only good thing Rick could say about the bastard was that he’d been discreet in his affairs. His mother hadn’t had a clue until a heart attack had dropped the old man in his tracks and she’d found out that her sons had a half brother living down in Mississippi.
Sara had been a better woman than anyone had expected—than Gerald had deserved. She’d welcomed Mitch into the family and made a place for him in her own home. She loved him like one of her own. Too bad she’d loved Gerald, too.
Rick had been eleven when his father died and his mother’s heart had been broken. He hadn’t felt anything decent for Gerald since.
Reaching the closed door just ten feet from the rear exit, Rick knocked.
A moment later, the door swung open. “Getting formal, aren’t we, Eternity? You always just barge—Oh. Sorry. No one usually bothers me back here besides—” Hugging her arms across her middle, Amanda finished with a grimace.
He would have invited himself inside if the space hadn’t been so small or the idea hadn’t seemed so bad. Instead, he leaned against the doorjamb and gave the room a quick scan. The walls were painted the same shade as her living room and the one-armed sofa looked a match to the one he’d seen at her place. There was an oval mirror on one wall, a floor lamp and a small table that held a bottle of water, a clock, a book, a pair of reading glasses and the empty wrapper from a trick-or-treat-size candy bar.
“Study hall?” he asked, bringing his gaze back to her.
She glanced at the table, too. “When I was in school, I studied in here on breaks.”
“Getting your GED?”
A pained look slid across her face. “About eleven years ago. This summer I finished my bachelor’s degree.”
“Congratulations,” he said, then added, “Sorry. I didn’t mean…”
She shrugged. “A lot of us didn’t get to finish high school.”
But that was no reason to automatically assume she hadn’t.
She’d traded tiger stripes for a filmy gold Grecian goddess thing that left one shoulder bare. She’d kept the gold coil around her arm. Her hai
r was piled on top of her head, curls spilling down, with a gold patterned band circling her forehead. Fabric draped loosely over her breasts, then gathered at her waist, belted by a thin gold chain. The skirt was barely deserving of the name, short, insubstantial, revealing peeks of the black thong underneath. The leather laces of a pair of platform sandals crisscrossed her calves.
And just about finished him.
What the hell was wrong with him? He’d been watching the girls dance for weeks now, first at Rosey’s Marietta club, then here. He’d seen them fully dressed, damn near naked and everything in between. It had become so commonplace that he hardly noticed anymore.
So why had he suddenly started noticing Amanda?
Breaks were few and Amanda had always protected every moment of hers. For every hour she’d spent in a college classroom, she’d spent two in this oversize closet, reading, cramming. Everyone knew to leave her alone when she was there. Oh, Eternity dropped in sometimes, always curious about Amanda’s studies and her plans for the future.
But the break was slipping away, and there was Rick blocking the door, saying nothing, just looking. Men have probably always looked at you, Julia had said. Men, sure. A Calloway? Just once, and she’d paid for that.
But that was a long time ago. She was all grown-up now. Her father was dead, her mother hardly spoke to her and soon she would be starting a new life. Nothing Rick could say or do could hurt her. Life, and her mother and his brother, had made sure of that.
Still, it took courage to turn her back, stroll across a few feet of plush carpet brought from home and seat herself on the chaise. She swung her legs onto the cushion, then picked up her book. “Did you come here for a reason?”
“Yeah. But damned if I can remember what it was.” The words were accompanied by a charming grin that could have fluttered every female heart in the place. But her heart wasn’t fluttering. It was just indigestion from the too-rich chocolate she’d eaten before his visit.
“Then close the door on your way out, will you?” She opened the book to the dog-ear marking her place and began to read again. At least, she went through the motions. She squinted at the words, getting each one into her brain in order but understanding none of them. She had no problem, though, understanding that he hadn’t left the room. That he still stood there, still looked at her. She ignored him as long as she could before lowering the book and asking, “Is there a reason you’re still here?”
“Are those your reading glasses?”
She glanced at the wire-framed glasses on the table. “Everything in here is mine.”
“So why aren’t you wearing them?”
Picking them up, she slid them into place. She wasn’t vain. As glasses went, they were flattering, and the fact that they brought hazy words into focus made wearing them a no-brainer. The fact that they made Rick hazy instead was another benefit. Plus, she couldn’t deny that somewhere down inside, she felt more serious, more substantive, when she wore them.
Did she want Rick to think there was more to her than a nice body?
“Cute,” he said, then slid his hand into his pocket. After pulling out a handful of bills, he counted out three twenties, a ten and a five and folded them neatly in fourths. “For today’s lesson.”
She took money from men on an almost-daily basis, but not from a Calloway since fifteen summers ago when she had clerked part-time at the Copper Lake Lumberyard, owned by Rick’s uncle Garry. He’d paid her in cash, folding the money in exactly the same way, delivering it with an oily smile and a look in his eyes that had made her feel small and insignificant.
At the end of that summer, Robbie had made her feel even worse.
But Rick’s look wasn’t any different than usual and he’d saved her the trouble of folding the bills herself. Accepting them, she slid them into the thin slot barely noticeable in the platform of her left shoe. Tip-jar shoes, they were called, giving a dancer a secure place to keep her tips when she was onstage…or in a back room.
“Thanks,” she said, then lowered her gaze to the book again, expecting him to leave.
He didn’t. “Do you think Julia will loosen up enough to actually get on a stage?”
Proust would have to wait for another day, Amanda acknowledged, closing the book and removing her glasses. “I don’t know. She says she wants to. A lot of people will do whatever it takes to get what they want.”
Like her. She’d worked hard to get what she wanted and she firmly believed the struggle would make the success that much sweeter.
“Do you think you could persuade Harry to give her a shot here?”
“You want to watch her dance in front of strangers?” There was that ick feeling she’d experienced earlier in the day.
“I want to keep an eye on her. She’s not used to places like this.”
“I can ask, depending on how the next lessons go.” Amanda had worked with Harry for years and she’d rarely asked favors of him. Because of that, and because she was popular with his customers, he would likely give Julia a shot without sending her to one of the smaller clubs first.
“Does your boyfriend ever come and watch you?”
She glanced at the clock, then stood, balancing on the eight-inch platforms as naturally as on bare feet. “No boyfriend.”
“What about the guys you date?”
“None of them, either. I’ve had priorities,” she said as she checked her appearance in the mirror, adjusting the headband. “Save money, buy my house, finish my degree. There will be time to worry about relationships when I retire.”
Rick’s brows raised. “You plan to wait another thirty or forty years before you look for a guy?”
She turned away from the mirror and replaced his reflection with the real thing. “When I retire from dancing. Five weeks and five days from today.”
He still looked surprised. “Then what will you do?”
She couldn’t contain the smile that spread from ear to ear. “When the spring semester begins in January, I’ll be the newest English lit teacher at the James C. Middleton College of Liberal Arts.”
He thumbed in the direction of the main room. “The old guys out there? The budget committee?”
She nodded. “Dean Jaeger, the one who wears the bow ties, was my advisor. When the job opened, he suggested I apply. I did, and they hired me.”
“And they don’t mind your dancing?”
Any traditional school would have found her background objectionable. Amanda had been prepared for that. She had even considered more than once changing her major—had acknowledged that to get a teaching job anywhere, she would have to gloss over her background at best, flat-out lie about it at worst. “They take the liberal part of their name seriously. Having a former stripper teach English lit seems perfectly reasonable to them.”
“Wow. I never had teachers like you in college. I might have paid more attention if I had.”
She hadn’t thought about his own college degree. Higher education had been a given for all Calloways, and the University of Georgia had been the place. They went on to successful lives. Amazing what advantages could do for a person. And yet Rick was tending bar in a strip club. How had that happened and how did it sit with the family back in Copper Lake?
The questions were nothing more than mild curiosity, she told herself, and she brushed them aside as easily as she gestured toward the hallway behind him. “Break’s over. I’ve got to go.”
He stood there a moment longer, then stepped aside. “Got to go entertain the budget committee,” he remarked, an odd note of something in his voice.
She didn’t try to figure out what it was, but slipped past him and went down the hall. When she turned into the dressing room doorway, he was still standing there. When she came out a moment later, he was gone. Relief seeped into her muscles, though she wasn’t about to examine why his presence—or absence—even registered.
As she approached the stage door, a new song started. Pop was the music of choice at Almost Heaven, though on o
ccasion she opted for blues or something Latin, sensual and sexual and steamy. At the moment, even with no sign of Rick, she was happy to have the pop. It would keep things cool.
Keep her cool.
The stage lights were bright enough to make the customers shadowy, but there was nothing muted about their reception. There was a whistle or two, some applause, a murmur of encouragement as she wrapped herself around the pole. She used the pole much as a woman might use her lover, swaying around it, rubbing against it, sliding down until her knees were splayed, then rising again, twisting until the pole was centered in her back, repeating the long, languid slide down.
Her eyes were half closed, her lips half curved, as she let the music surround her. Dancing came as naturally to her as breathing. She heard a note or two, and her body began to sway. She didn’t have to think, plan or concentrate. The music took over, and everything else faded into the background. The voices, the heat that formed a sheen over her skin, the gazes and leers…none of it mattered. Only the music.
She loosened the chain around her waist, letting its length trickle between her fingers into a small mound at the base of the pole. The hook that secured her dress was next to go. With a shimmy, the gold lamé puddled at her feet, leaving her in a strapless black bra and a thong. The act brought the usual reaction, still muted in her music-dazed brain…then her muscles went taut. A shiver rippled along her skin, making her feel exposed; heat followed in its wake.
Opening her eyes, she searched for the gaze that could create such awareness through the haze, knowing before she saw him that it was Rick. He stood off to the side, just inside the door that led to the back hallway, arms crossed over his chest. He looked formidable enough to be a bouncer and drop-dead sexy enough to be any woman’s fantasy.
And he was watching her with enough intensity to make her feel like his fantasy.
She turned her back to him. He was a Calloway. He worked at the club. He was involved with Julia. More than enough reasons to keep her distance. But that didn’t stop the warmth from seeping deeper inside her. It didn’t stop her nipples from drawing into hard peaks. It didn’t stop the rush of desire that welled in her belly.
Forbidden Stranger Page 3