ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5)

by Glenna Sinclair

  “You’re already beautiful on the outside, sweetheart,” my mom had explained. “We just wanted to remind you that it’s important to be beautiful on the inside, too.”

  They didn’t have to remind me by giving me that name. I didn’t know how to feel beautiful on the inside, and I certainly didn’t feel beautiful on the outside. I felt most comfortable in a t-shirt, my brown hair was almost always in a messy ponytail, and I was hopeless at makeup.

  “That’s it!” Caro declared, whirling away and yanking me from my angry ruminations. “I’m calling your parents!”

  “Don’t you dare!” I cried, chasing her across the messy kitchen, bumping into the counter, a chair, and a fellow partygoer. I couldn’t plot my course correctly, and my legs seemed to have minds of their own. “Caro! My parents will murder me if they find out I’m here!”

  “They will not,” she scoffed, waving her phone at me.

  “Well, they’ll ground me for the rest of my life,” I said. That was much more feasible.

  “You’re going to college at the end of the summer, stupid,” Caro said. “They might say you’re grounded, but they can’t actually do anything to you once you go away to school.”

  She had a point, but it still made me cringe to imagine my parents showing up to the party to drag me home. They’d denied me permission to come here, and I’d promised them I’d stay home. But the siren’s song of a house party full of the friends I’d made in high school—complete with beer and missing all parental supervision—was too strong to resist. I wanted to see everyone in one place one last time before I went away to college. And when my parents decided to go out to dinner and a movie, I stayed home just long enough to see their car roll out of the driveway.

  “Just don’t call them,” I begged Caro.

  “I wouldn’t actually call your parents,” she said, rolling her eyes at me as she shoved her phone back in her pocket. “I just want you to have a good time and not be all mopey.”

  “I’m not mopey,” I protested.

  “Then prove it on the dance floor,” Caro said, grabbing me by my hand and pulling me into the living room.

  All the furniture had been shoved to one end, clearing the wooden floor of obstacles, and the music boomed so loud that it rattled the windows. Dancing felt ethereal, like I was weightless, buoyed up only by the beat and the crush of people around me. It was easy to forget that anything was wrong as long as I was dancing, whipping my hair to the rhythm of the song, taking the first cold bottle of beer I was offered, not caring who it came from or why.

  There was only the beer. There was only the music.

  And then, there were the flashing red and blue lights of the police outside.

  “Shit! The cops!” Caro yelped, grabbing my hand. “Let’s go!”

  There was a mad scramble at the loud knocking on the door, the music still blaring, the beer still cool in my mouth. I let my friend drag me through the house, fleeing through a back door into the humid Texas night.

  “Stay where you are!” a voice over a bullhorn commanded, but then the rest of our friends who’d followed us in our escape congealed briefly around us and then scattered.

  “Run for it!” Caro urged, and it was all I could do to get my legs to obey, in danger at every second of tripping and falling over myself. If the cops decided to give chase, they couldn’t catch us all, but I didn’t want to be the weakest link in the pack.

  We dashed several unsteady blocks in a blind panic then cut down a side street and started to double back cautiously to assess the situation. By the time we returned to the scene of the party, the house was dark, as if nothing had ever happened there. The cops had left, either satisfied they’d scared all of us kids straight or with a couple of us in the backseat of the patrol car, about to learn a hard lesson about underage drinking.

  “Dammit,” Caro complained, as we shuffled down to her parked car. “I don’t want this night to end.”

  I was still high on the adrenaline of the chase, the endorphins of our successful escape, and, of course, all the beer I’d imbibed.

  “I’m going to miss you so much when we go to college,” I said, waxing suddenly sentimental and looping an arm around Caro’s shoulders. She was my best friend, and we’d somehow managed to enroll in colleges hundreds of miles away from each other.

  “We have to do something to salvage this night,” she declared, hugging me back. “I’m not ready to accept defeat!”

  “Let’s just drive,” I suggested. We’d escaped the cops. We were invincible. “If we just drive, the universe will show us what to do.”

  The wind whistling in the open windows was cool bliss to the pressing thickness of the night, lifting the tendrils of hair that had escaped the ponytail off of my neck. It was better than Caro’s faulty air conditioning and felt purer than any box fan I’d stood in front of, seeking relief.

  We turned the radio up, sang as loud as we could to the songs we knew, and faked it to the songs we didn’t, choosing our course at random, careening through the streets until we were outside of the city, on the country roads that we knew some of our classmates liked to race each other down. It was thrilling to witness the rows of crops whip by in dizzying patterns, to be the only set of headlights on the roadway, for the curves in the road to move the contents of my stomach, to stick my hand out the window and cup the air as it whooshed by.

  Caro muttered something out of rhythm of the song we were listening to, and I glanced over at her. She was a better singer than I was, so I was always eager to point out if she missed lyrics or her voice broke.

  She didn’t glance back. Her eyes were fixed on the road, her mouth set in a grim line.

  I felt, more than heard, the tires slip into a skid, my gaze still fixated on Caro’s face, watching her eyes get wider and wider and then nothing.

  Chapter 2

  Beer didn’t taste so good to me anymore. I couldn’t so much as look at a bottle of the stuff without feeling that heavy clash against my teeth, knowing what came next, knowing what I’d caused.

  No, to dull my brain these days, I could only stomach the bite of liquor. I preferred it to hurt a little, going down. It was a tradeoff, a tiny form of penance for the numbed bliss I found in being drunk.

  If I drank enough of it, I didn’t feel anything.

  “You’re up, Beauty,” the bartender said, jerking his thumb toward the dinky little stage across the floor. “Hope you’re sober enough to make a little money.”

  “I’m fine.” I downed the rest of my cocktail and wove my way toward the stage. There weren’t many customers tonight. Hell, there were usually not many customers ever—but it paid the bills.

  My music started before I could hop onto the stage, but I didn’t much care. As long as I kept the customers drunker than I was, my tits and ass would be the only things that mattered to them. I figured I could probably even make money by just standing up here and not dancing at all, but I’d never been brave enough to try it.

  It wasn’t fun going to bed hungry, and I needed the money to feed myself and to keep gas in my car.

  I used the pole to haul myself to my feet and started doing a slow spin around it before exploding into a swing, responding to an upbeat burst of notes in the song that was playing. Swinging around and around with all the alcohol I’d had to drink was practically a form of meditation. All the colors and faces around me blurred, and I could pretend I wasn’t here, pretend that nothing had happened, that I still lived in Texas, that my parents…

  I dropped out of the spin abruptly, ignoring my dizzy head, going on all fours to approach a grizzled man seated at one of the tables closest to the stage.

  “Is your name really Beauty?” he shouted over the music, as I arched my back and then popped my ass out abruptly, emphasizing the curves my body had softened into, making the little tin coins on the wrap I was wearing tinkle.

  “Sure is,” I said, putting a leg on either side of him and gripping him so hard he nearly spilled his dri
nk. “Buy a dance from me and I’ll let you see my driver’s license to prove it.”

  That was the one thing I could do for my parents, after everything. I could embrace the name they’d seen fit to give me. I could stop disrespecting that little bit of legacy left behind, own it, and let it be the one thing that still tied me to them.

  I noticed another man approach the stage in the periphery, so I held my thong strap out and let the first man slip a few bills beneath it, snapping it securely against my skin.

  That was the way this game was played. I danced and they came, mesmerized by the sway of my hips or the way I spun and shimmied, ready to bestow dollars upon me. Later, they could buy me drinks at a jacked up price and I’d get a cut of the profits. If they really liked me, I’d perform a special dance for them right at their table so other customers could get jealous at how attentive I could be and want to buy more dances. Those little intimacies were much more expensive than the tips I got up on the stage, but I had to dangle the bait in front of their faces to get them to bite.

  One song ended and I rolled right into a dance for the next song, adjusting my moves to go with the beat. It was Caro who’d taught me to dance, adapting the moves she’d learned from her older cousin into routines we could master to impress the naïve boys at our school into thinking we were much more worldly than we really were.

  I didn’t want to think about school, or Caro, or any of that. I couldn’t.

  I climbed to the top of the pole and abruptly hung upside down, spinning slowly so everyone could see, not caring that one of my breasts had popped out of my cheap bikini top before I’d planned for it to do so, wondering just how much it would hurt to let go and slam headfirst into the stage fifteen feet below me. Would it kill me or just maim me? Would anyone even notice me fall?

  As I gripped the pole with my hands, I righted myself, sliding downward, remembering how badly I’d hurt my legs the first time I’d tried this move. Now, the friction was only an afterthought.

  The trick had earned me a few piles of singles along the stage, and I kicked them toward the center of the platform so the customers couldn’t go changing their minds and taking back what was rightfully mine.

  A third song and my bikini top was tossed aside, earning a few whoops from the back of the room. I shed my thin wrap, coins ringing like bells, and it was just me, a pair of battered heels, and my black thong, spinning around the pole, wondering if the money I earned tonight would fill up my gas tank so I could get the hell out of here, wondering where I would even go if I could.

  There wasn’t anything here for me anymore. Not after that night.

  The song ended, and I gathered my clothes and money, waiting for the first customer to request a special dance from me—now that they’d seen everything I had to offer.

  I bellied up to the bar again in the meantime, laying out the handful of bills I’d earned, doing my best to straighten the wrinkles out of them. When I’d first started out in this business, shame had driven me to exchange the bills for higher denominations—and much crisper paper. But now, I didn’t care to buy my groceries with the singles I’d danced for. It was a way of life, and the knowing glances from cashiers didn’t sting me like they used to.

  Alcohol could dull everything.

  I counted out enough money for another cocktail and signaled the bartender.

  “Vodka Red Bull,” I said. I didn’t like the bubble in the drink, as it reminded me too much of the carbonation in beer, but I needed a little boost to my game or I wasn’t going to make it through the shift.

  “Can I buy that for you?”

  A customer settled into the chair beside me, and I couldn’t help but stare. He was gorgeous; he clearly took much better care of himself than most people who frequented this establishment. His blue eyes sparkled with mischief, and his neatly trimmed beard did a poor job of hiding his smirk. I couldn’t guess fashion labels just by looking at an outfit, but I could tell that they were high end because of the way they fit this man’s body—his suit jacket hugging his strong shoulders, the trousers highlighting his trim waist, and his shoes polished to an opulent shine.

  “That sounds nice,” I said, propping my chin up on my fist, continuing my casual perusal of his physical attributes. He had nicely manicured nails, I saw, as he smoothly withdrew a few bills from a money clip, alerting me to the fact that this was a man who earned his money with his mind instead of his hands. I unwittingly wondered what those hands would feel like on either side of my hips, guiding me as I gave a dance just for him, right here at the bar.

  “You’re a pretty good dancer for not being here that long,” he said, returning my gaze, unperturbed.

  “Excuse me?” I said, blinking rapidly, shocked out of my appraisal.

  “This is the longest you’ve been in the same place since you left college,” he continued without missing a beat, taking the drink the bartender offered him and pushing mine toward me. “But for this line of work, the way you work that pole after just a month…if I wore a hat, I’d take it off to you.”

  I expelled my breath in a haughty laugh. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

  “I should introduce myself, Beauty,” he said, raking his hand through his dark hair before holding it out. “You’re going by Beauty Hart these days, aren’t you? Do you prefer Amanda?”

  “Beauty is fine,” I said, eyeing that proffered hand before fitting my own into it. “And you still haven’t introduced yourself.”

  “Daniel Shepard,” he said, gripping my hand in his. “But Dan’s fine.”

  I waited for some kind of explanation, some sort of insight as to why he knew my name before I gave it, how he knew I’d left college in Texas and wound up here in Washington state, but he only held my hand overly long before releasing it to swirl his drink—a dark alcohol over ice.

  “What are you doing here, Dan?” I finally asked, curiosity overcoming my mistrust. I took great pains not to know anyone—wherever I went. It made it that much easier to pull the car out of park and leave anytime I wanted.

  “I’m here to see if you want to flash your tits at strangers for cash for the rest of your life,” he said, rattling the ice cubes around in his glass. It was something of a shock to hear such a word come out of the mouth of someone who I’d thought was so refined.

  “Excuse me?”

  “This is a career that can’t last forever, you know,” he reasoned. “You peak in your late twenties, get pity tips in your thirties, and are something of a novelty in your forties. I know that seems like a long time away. When I was twenty-one like you, I thought thirty-two was a long way away, and yet here I am.”

  Dan held his glass aloft in an ironic cheer, but I ignored it and took a sip from my cocktail. How did he know my age? I fought to keep some kind of poker face in place. It was obvious that this man knew much more about me than I did about him. I didn’t want to give him any more satisfaction than he probably already had.

  “All I’m saying is that opportunities await you, if you’re willing to seize them,” he finished, draining his drink dry and signaling the bartender for another.

  “I don’t fuck customers, if that’s what you’re implying,” I said, disappointed when he didn’t flinch at my language. I realized that I was still nearly naked and hustled to retie my bikini top and secure the coin-dotted wrap around my hips. It wasn’t much armor against the man who apparently knew me better than he should, but it would have to do.

  “I’m implying no such thing,” he said, smoothly. “I’m talking about something else entirely. An opportunity far from this place of employment. Well, not too far, physically. The far I meant was more along the lines of culturally.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, shaking my head in consternation. I was tired of this verbal assault of banter I didn’t fully understand. It was past time for this fancy fellow to make his point.

  “I mean I’m here to offer you a job on behalf of my family’s company—Shepard Shipmen
ts,” Dan said, retrieving a business card from his suit jacket pocket and flicking it toward me. The paper Dan’s business card was printed on was thick and subtly textured, but besides his position—vice president—it told me nothing.

  “Never heard of it,” I said, flicking the card back at him.

  “Keep it,” he insisted, pushing it back in front of me. “In case you need to contact me in the future.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him I didn’t have a phone at my disposal but closed it again, thinking better of it. He didn’t need to know any more about me than he already did. A sudden rush of irritation swept over me. Why was this guy wasting my time in the first place? Why was he being so creepy?

  “I think I’ve been a pretty good sport, don’t you?” I asked, keeping my voice sweet as my eyes narrowed. “But if you’re here to blow wind up my ass about shit that sounds too good to be true, you can fuck right off. I’m not gullible. I know when someone’s making fun of me.”

  “I’m not—” Dan cut himself off and sighed. “I’m sorry. Maybe I am going about this all wrong.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” he agreed. “All right. I know that you attended the University of Texas.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you didn’t finish,” he continued, casual, as if not finishing a college education wasn’t a big deal. If my parents had still been…if they could still…they would’ve killed me for leaving early, for not completing the degree they wanted for me.

  “That’s right,” I said, sticking my chin out. “Is there a problem with that? College isn’t for everyone, you know.”

  “I know,” he said, smiling. “I had to transfer no less than four times before I found the right fit for myself. So. At the University of Texas you took a business course. It was lower level—a general degree requirement—but you did quite well in it. Your professor—I don’t imagine you’d remember his name—took note.”

  I scoured my brain. It seemed like a million years had passed between college and now, even though, in reality, it had been just over a year. My time on the road, the various scrapes I’d gotten myself into and out of, and all the ways I’d had to figure out how to get money took precedence over any book education. Still, I could vaguely remember taking a business class—and actually enjoying the things I was learning.