Wrong then Right (A Love Happens Novel Book 2)

by Jodi Watters

  Asher Coleson was a lot of things. He was the all American boy turned wounded war hero. He was the sole male heir to a celebrated family winery that he wanted jack shit to do with. He was the boy she’d looked up to as a little girl—both before and after he’d been outed as her half brother. And he was the singular reason why Marshall Coleson had gone from a strict but loving father to a bitter, manipulative old man.

  And yet, Hope still sought his approval. Marshall’s, too.

  “Wait,” she said suddenly, her face flaming as even more mortification set in. “How did you know I was in here? Did you follow me?”

  Oh, my fucking God. Did he see their impersonal exchange when Beckett charmingly tossed her a cheap plastic keycard? Had he witnessed him hotfoot it out of the room, his walk of shame obvious to anyone looking? And if he had, why was he bothering to ask her about him?

  Ash looked affronted. “I didn’t have to, Hope.”

  He didn’t have to? What the hell did that mean? Was there a GPS tracking device planted in her pocketbook? Did he have somebody tailing her, reporting her whereabouts back to him? She wouldn’t put it past him to micro-chip her like the family dog just to keep tabs on her life.

  Jesus, apparently she’d lost her right mind, along with her virginity.

  Clutching her purse to her stomach, she looked around the room, her gaze skipping over the disheveled bed.

  She closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath, willing to admit defeat. “Look, clearly this was a bad idea. I know it, but I can’t change it now. Nothing you say will make me feel any more or less shitty about my behavior. But at the risk of sounding childish, Ash? You’re not the boss of me.”

  Pleased that she might escape with a shard of her pride intact, she turned to leave with her chin held higher than appropriate given the situation, brushing past the hoochie leaning against the doorway.

  And nearly collided with Helen.

  “Miss Coleson. I believe you’re out of your assigned area.” Helen’s satisfied voice echoed through the corridor and Hope knew it right then. She was doomed. “The catering staff has strict instructions to remain within the employee only areas of the hotel. Fraternizing in the guest suite wings is prohibited.” Looking over Hope’s shoulder, she glimpsed the interior of the room, her penciled on eyebrow rising in haughty disapproval. “Or inside the rooms themselves.”

  The need to defend herself was inherent. “I’m off the clock, Helen. I punched out the minute my shift ended. On the dot, as you’ve instructed in the past. That was a few hours ago.”

  “Vistancia employees are expected to act with proper decorum at all times, young lady, whether you’re on duty or not, as long as you’re on the property. Clearly, you’ve violated this policy and I would be remiss if I didn’t address it with appropriate disciplinary action.”

  Fine, Hope thought. She’d be peeling and chopping bushels of fingerling potatoes for the next month, listening to Val tease her incessantly about the repercussions of being a dick hound. She just wanted to get the confrontation with Helen over with so she could go home and cry herself to sleep.

  “Your employment has been terminated, effective immediately. Your final paycheck will be cut and mailed to you promptly. Please return any uniforms you have to the laundry attendant at once and quickly see yourself off the property. I can contact security to escort you, if necessary.”

  Hope could only stare at her, the words bouncing around in her brain like fragmented letters, their meaning undecipherable. Terminated? Did she just get fired? “But—”

  “No buts, my dear,” she said, her twinkling eyes darting toward a watchful Ash, before adding, “and I don’t care who your Daddy is or how much of this hotel he might own. Rules apply to everyone and we must all abide by them.”

  And with that cryptic statement, she turned on her orthopedic shoes and briskly walked away, the sound of sandpaper echoing off the corridor walls as her pantyhose covered thighs rubbed together.

  Staring down at the jewel toned floral carpeting covering the wide hallway, Hope tried to breathe. Terminated. Fired. Canned. From a job she was sure she’d gotten on her own, without her father’s influence. No wonder Helen was always on her case, riding her about every little thing under the sun. Marshall’s reach was longer than she’d realized.

  “I can give you a job, Hope. You weren’t gonna survive serving cake for minimum wage much longer, anyway.” Ash’s quietly spoken offer answered her earlier questions.

  He knew where she worked and how much money she made. And that she wasn’t taking any from Marshall. He really was keeping tabs on her. Might have gotten her this low paying job to begin with. He might have gotten her fired from it, too. There was no other explanation as to why Helen would’ve shown up here. The resort was far too large for this encounter to be coincidental and her chest tightened at the betrayal.

  Ash had always rebelled against Marshall, ultimately leading him to sever ties with both the old man and the winery altogether. Hope wasn’t privy to all the reasons why, she only knew that Olivia had been a casualty in the war between father and son. Maybe she’d been one, too. After Ash directly disobeyed their father to join the Army, leaving only Rosa to buffer a young Hope from Marshall’s redirected attention, he’d still looked out for her. Often out of the country, he’d maintained a passive presence in her life, albeit long distance. When she’d turned eighteen and left the vineyard, their contact had been minimal at best, mostly due to Hope’s need for freedom, not Ash’s lack of trying.

  But if her assumptions were true and he’d gotten her first hired then fired, he was more like Marshall than he realized. And for the second time tonight, the weight of not being good enough threatened to take her down.

  Rejection from two men in one night? That had to be a record.

  She pasted on a false smile, choosing to believe that his job offer came from a place of love and not guilt. “Thanks, but I don’t need a babysitter.” Praying he would stay put, she told her feet to move and somehow, they did.

  “Stay in touch, Hope. Don’t ignore my calls,” he warned, but didn’t try to stop her.

  Blessed silence was the only thing following her as she made the long trek toward her car.

  Just when she’d managed to rid herself of one stubborn problem keeping her from living life to the fullest—her silly virginity—another one popped up. And suddenly the disappearance of Mr. Man Candy, along with the odd appearance of her brother, wasn’t her biggest predicament.

  She didn’t have a job anymore.

  Holy hell, what could possibly go wrong next? The only thing that could make this night worse was if she ran over a litter of adorably speckled puppies on her way home.

  Or, if once she got there, there was a florescent orange poster nailed to the front door of her dumpy furnished apartment, the Notice Of Eviction highlighted in bold, black font. Fair warning to all the other poor suckers living in the rundown complex. Apparently, her landlord was taking a firm stance on timely rent payments. He and Helen were a match made in rule enforcing hell.

  The good news was, she had three whole days to pack up her toothbrush and move on to greener pastures. And since she was no longer gainfully employed, her commute time had just been slashed to zero. Any other dump in the city of San Diego would do.

  The bad news was, her best option had a troubling amount of bars covering the windows and a view of the graffiti painted dumpsters. And when she attempted to withdraw a chunk of precious education money from her savings account to pay the deposit, it was gone.

  All of it. Gone.

  Every last cent of her education fund. Her emergency fund. Nearly thirteen thousand dollars. And gone along with it was her architecture degree and quite possibly the face of her entire future, because there was no way she could afford to pay out of pocket for her last year of school.

  She had forty-seven dollars in her checking account and a five dollar bill in her purse.

  And no place to live.


  CHAPTER FIVE

  Strippers just didn’t get the recognition they deserved. If ever there was a group of hard working people who earned their money the old fashioned way, literally, it was them.

  Sure, there were a few bad apples in the bunch, feeding into the common misconceptions that gave the entire profession in general a black eye. But from the day Hope marched into Club Kitten like she wasn’t scared shitless and applied for a job—any job—she’d been surprisingly welcomed by all the staff members, the girls included. And they were all intimidatingly beautiful. A mix of ageless women, with varying hair colors, cup sizes and degrees of tanned skin, all shaking their asses and perky, bare breasts just so they could pay the bills. The money was good, but the competition was fierce, and those boobs they were jiggling were valuable assets. Because this was no low class, smoke filled dive bar like some strip clubs were. The ones she imagined had aging and dirty, cracked out hoes attempting to do the splits on a filthy stage while random, lonely men jizzed all over the floor.

  Club Kitten was just the opposite.

  Yes, it was a small, relatively unknown club located in the back of a hundred-year-old, crumbling red brick building on the wrong side of downtown. And yes, there was an inconspicuous entrance off a narrow, potholed alleyway with an adjacent parking lot that was severely under lit at night. But it was a whole different story inside the club. The custom decor was modern and lavish. Unexpectedly high-end. So were the clientele.

  White collar, wealthy types who were looking to have a few drinks and unwind after a stressful day at the office. Or your average Joe, hard working and loyal, heading out with the boys for a rare night away from the wife and kids. Or that adventurous couple you only read about in magazines, taking in a show together, open to where an unusually risque date night might lead them. The club still had their fair share of rowdy and drunken customers at times, but the bouncers were quick to remove them from the premises so as not to kill the buzz of other paying patrons. What mattered most was that their wallets were full when they walked in and empty when they walked out.

  Underrated is what these girls were. Hope now knew that first hand.

  Well, not entirely. She hadn’t actually done any stripping, despite Bubba’s relentless nagging that she do so. “The moolah’s gonna roll in for ya’, honey, and I’m talkin’ Oprah dollars,” he’d been telling her. “You’ll be stuffin’ your G-string with so much bank, your kitty cat’s gonna turn green. That face with that body is like an ATM machine ‘round here. Easy money, toots.”

  Not an appealing analogy, but one that had her wheels turning.

  “What can I get you guys?” she asked cheerfully, plopping a couple of black cocktail napkins in front of the two men just sitting down at the only vacant table in her station.

  Thursday afternoons were notoriously busy. Bubba said it was the most convincing day of the week for a man to leave the office early, but tell the wife he was working late, all so his Saturday would be freed up to go antique shopping with her.

  “Well, what are you offering, sugar tits?” The chubby one asked, a clever grin flashing across his pock marked face as he assessed her from the neck down.

  Hope rolled her eyes but didn’t take the bait, flashing the wide, toothy smile she’d perfected on her first day. “Any kind of drink you want, sir. The boobs,” she nodded toward the stage, “are that way.”

  “How much to see your fun bags naked?” He leered suggestively at her chest, her ample cleavage overflowing the tight, black leather corset.

  Wearing the standard issue Club Kitten uniform, the corset covered her from nipples to navel, cinching her waist beautifully as long as she didn’t eat a heavy lunch. A super short, pleated leather miniskirt with thigh-high fishnets completed the look. In reality, Hope bared more skin when she spent a day at the beach, so the sexy getup wasn’t as provocative as it seemed. And luckily, she’d kept her ta-ta’s covered with only a few nipple slip near misses.

  Hope laughed as if flattered by his predictable chauvinism even as her skin crawled, more than happy to correct him again. “The only naked fun bags you’re going to see tonight, sir, are on the stage.”

  The man seated next to him looked sheepish, his face red as he ordered for them both. “Two whiskey’s. Neat.”

  “Coming right up,” Hope said easily and hustled toward the bar, selectively ignoring the disrespectful man’s crude comment about his dick coming right up, too.

  If she had a dollar for every time a customer hit on her or assumed she was available for purchase, she’d have a tidy little sum in her tip tally at the end of each shift. Earning them the straight up legit way was her preferred method though, and in the three weeks she’d been waitressing at Club Kitten, she hadn’t done half bad.

  “Any trouble goin’ on over there, toots? Looks like ya’ got one comin’ in hot.” Bubba tilted an ivory handled beer tap forward, filling a chilled mug with one hand while the other reached for a long list of tickets printing the next round of drinks. Without looking, he released the tap just as the foam head reached the top of the glass and grabbed another mug.

  “Nothing I can’t handle with a wink and a smile. It’s all good in the hood, Bubbalicious.” Standing at the servers station near the end of the bar, she tapped her order onto a flat screen and watched as he expertly poured the liquor, sliding her foot around her ridiculously high heeled shoe and curling her toes in relief. “Except for these damn shoes. Is it asking too much to include flats in the dress code?”

  “Suck it up, buttercup.” Bubba’s eyes crinkled, his genuine smile obscured by an unruly, overgrown reddish-blonde beard. “The higher your shoes, the fatter your wad of cash.”

  Unfortunately, truer words had never been spoken.

  Wincing, she shifted her weight and switched feet, knowing she’d have a new blister by the end of the night. Her double shift ended at eleven, earlier than normal, but still six hours away. Once it did, all Hope wanted was a greasy cheeseburger and a long soak in a bathtub. Saying a silent prayer she could stay at Val’s tonight, she filled her tray with the two whiskeys and a round of dirty martini’s for another table, barely suppressing a groan when her poor feet rebelled. Not that anybody could hear it over the pulsing beat of Lady Gaga blaring through the bar.

  “Watch that one,” he said, motioning toward her newest table. “I’m bettin’ he’s gonna play grab ass with ya’.” The strictly enforced no touching rule applied to dancers and servers alike.

  Nodding, she navigated her way through the low lit bar, choosing her path wisely so she didn’t block the view of the show. Intentionally making eye contact with her customers, Hope allowed her smiling gaze to linger. According to Bubba, the best way to get a man’s money was to make him think he had a shot with you.

  Stroking dick was bad, he preached to the girls in a fatherly manner, but stroking ego was just fine. And Hope wasn’t above doing it.

  All eyes were on Bridget though, a woman so insanely beautiful she should be on a runway in Paris. Instead, she worked the main stage, the two smaller stages flanking each side empty since it was still early. And in strip club time, late afternoon was early. The feature show, where all three stages showcased a choreographed trio of topless, gyrating female flesh, didn’t start until later in the evening. A flash of fire engine red glinting off latex knee boots near the lap dance booths caught her attention. Kiki might’ve had her back to her customer, but the stacked redhead was working her ass against his lap—with a two inch degree of separation, of course—with skilled precision. A pinch of unease skittered through Hope at the sight of the woman’s exposed breasts, too perfectly round and high to be anything other than real expensive, but the awkwardness vanished as quickly as it came. It was amazing what a person could get accustomed to, and in the last month, she’d become increasingly relaxed around the naked female form. Kiki grinned when their eyes met, giving Hope their high sign as she winked deliberately, her mascara-heavy eyelashes and red painted lips disguising a
slightly hooked nose. Glancing at the gentleman on the receiving end of her practiced moves, Hope shrugged negligently, disagreeing with Kiki’s opinion. The girls all shared non-verbal ques with each other, sometimes the only way to communicate during busy times. An exaggerated wink meant they were actually hot for their current customer, therefore giving them a bit of extra attention. Some chose to continue that attention outside the club after hours. For pleasure rather than money, of course, and completely on the down low since Bubba would have a cow if he knew. Their other sign was the subtle, nearly undetectable finger slash across the throat, which meant they couldn’t wait to get away from whatever douche bag was rubbing his beer belly against them, waving bills like they were zoo animals.

  For Hope, walking into the forbidden gentleman’s club for the first time three weeks ago, with her sparse resume tucked neatly into her purse, had been like stepping into an alternate universe.

  Desperation had brought her to the club. Determination had her opening the door.

  “Ya’ better show me some ID pronto, missy, or you can walk your jailbait ass right on outta’ here.” The strawberry blonde man looked more like a lumberjack than a business owner, his booming voice as intimidating as his barrel chest and thick arms. “An’ I can spot a fake a mile away.”

  He stood behind a long, U-shaped bar, topped with frosted glass and sapphire blue granite, backed by a mirrored wall covered with glass shelves. Back lit and glowing in the darkened bar, the wall highlighted dozens of strategically placed liquor bottles. The pungent smell of pine cleaner mixed with artificial vanilla scent assaulted her as her vision adjusted from the bright, late morning sunshine to the dimmed incandescent light of the closed club.

  Frozen to the spot, she took the place in with shocked silence. It looked more like the cigar lounge at her father’s members only country club than a strip joint.

  Several round tables with deep seated chairs upholstered in cobalt blue velvet filled the bar. Spaced tightly together, they were spread across a sea of gray damask carpeting usually seen in upscale casinos. Larger sections of seating lined the perimeter, featuring comfortable built in sofas covered in blue and black zebra print. The area was elevated, accessible only by the three narrow steps on either end, making it prime, stage viewing height. The VIP section, she guessed, based on the blue velvet ropes blocking it from the main floor. Shadows hid the outer areas of the massive space, but she could see a row of narrow, yet lavishly appointed booths, open to the room but concealed on each side with fabric paneled dividers. Her face flamed when she realized that was where the more intimate, one on one acts took place.