by Nora Roberts
She’d had no English, no contacts, the equivalent of two hundred dollars tucked in her bra and, as her husband had opted to remain in Prague, no father for her babies.
What she’d had was spine, a shrewd mind and a body fashioned for wet dreams. She’d put all of them to use in a strip joint in Sydney, taking it off for the drunk and the lonely and ruthlessly banking her meager pay as well as her substantial tips.
She’d learned to love the Aussies for their generosity, their humor and their easy acceptance of the outcast. She saw that her children were well fed, and if she occasionally took a private job to see that they also had good shoes, it was only sex.
Within five years, she had enough socked away to invest in a small club with partners. She still stripped, she still sold her body when it suited her. Within ten years, she’d bought out her partners and retired from the stage.
By the time the wall came down, Marcella owned the club in Sydney, one in Melbourne, a percentage of an office complex and a good chunk of a residential apartment building. She’d been pleased to see the Communists ousted from the land of her birth, but had given the matter little thought.
At first.
But she’d begun to wonder and, to her surprise, to yearn to hear her own language spoken in the streets, to see the domes and bridges of her own city. Leaving her son and daughter in charge of her Australian holdings, Marcella flew back to Prague for what she assumed would be a sentimental journey.
But the businesswoman in her smelled opportunity, and opportunities were not to be wasted. Prague would once more be a city that mixed Old World and New, would once again become the Paris of Eastern Europe. That meant commerce, tourist dollars, and getting in on the ground floor.
She bought property—a small, atmospheric hotel; a quaint, traditional restaurant. And, out of that sentiment for both her homelands, she opened Down Under.
She ran a clean place with healthy girls. She didn’t mind if they took private jobs. She knew very well that sex often paid for the extras that made life bearable. But if there was a hint of drug use, employee or customer, the offender was shown the door.
There were no second chances at Down Under.
She developed a cordial relationship with the local police, regularly attended the opera and became a patron of the arts. She watched her city come to life again, with color, with music and with money.
Though she claimed she intended to return to Sydney, years passed. And she stayed.
At sixty, she maintained the body that had made her fortune, dressed in the latest Paris fashions and could spot a troublemaker at ten yards in the dark.
When Gideon Sullivan walked in, she gave him one long stare. Too handsome for his own good, she decided. And his gaze scanned the room rather than the stage, looking for something other than pretty, bouncing breasts.
Or someone.
THE CLUB WAS slicker than he’d expected. There was plenty of bass-heavy techno music blaring, and lights flashing in concert. Onstage a trio of women were performing some sort of routine on long silver poles.
He supposed some men liked to imagine their dick as the pole, but Gideon could think of better uses for his than having a woman hanging upside down on it.
There were plenty of tables, all of them occupied. The ones nearest the stage were jammed with both men and women sipping drinks and watching the naked acrobatics.
Hazy blue smoke fogged in the light streams, but the smell of whiskey and beer was no more offensive than in his own local pub. A lot of the clientele wore black, and a lot of the black was leather, but there were enough obvious couples to make him wonder why a man would bring a date along to watch other women strip.
Though the place was somehow more middle-class than the dive he and Malachi had spent one memorable evening in on a trip to London, he was glad his mother had sent him, over Rebecca’s furious objections, rather than his sister.
This was no place for a young woman of good family.
Though apparently Cleo Toliver found it suitable enough.
He moved to the bar, ordered a beer. He could see the dancers, down to G-strings and tattoos now as they swung in unison on their poles, in the mirrors behind it.
He took out a cigarette, struck a match and considered his best approach. He preferred the direct route whenever possible.
As applause and whistles broke out, he gestured to the bartender. “Cleo Toliver working tonight?”
“Why?”
“Family connection.”
The man didn’t respond to Gideon’s easy smile, but only mopped at the bar, shrugged. “She’s around.” And moved off before Gideon could ask where.
So I’ll wait, Gideon thought. There were worse ways for a man to spend his time than watching well-built women peel off their clothes.
“You looking for one of my girls?”
Gideon turned from the performer who was currently crawling over the stage like a cat. The woman who stood beside him was nearly as tall as he was. Her hair was Harlow blonde and coiled in complicated, lacquered twists. She wore a business suit, without a blouse, and the milky tops of her rather amazing breasts spilled out between the lapels.
He felt a twinge of guilt for noticing them when he looked at her face and realized she was more than old enough to be his mother.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m looking for Cleo Toliver.”
Marcella’s brows lifted at the polite address, and she signaled for a drink. “Why?”
“Begging your pardon. I’d rather speak to Miss Toliver about that, if it’s all the same to you.”
Without glancing at the bar, Marcella lifted the neat scotch she knew would be there. Might be handsome as sin, she mused, and have the look of a man who could handle himself in a fight. But he’d been raised to be respectful to his elders.
While she didn’t necessarily trust such niceties, she appreciated them.
“You cause trouble for one of my girls, I cause trouble for you.”
“I’d as soon avoid trouble altogether.”
“See you do. Cleo is the next act.” She downed her scotch, set down the empty and strolled away on her ice-pick heels.
She made her way backstage, through the smell of perfume, sweat and face paint. Her dancers shared one room lined on both sides with long mirrors and communal counters. Each made her own nest out of a section, so that the counters were a messy sea of cosmetics, pasties, stuffed toys and candy. Photographs of boyfriends, film stars and the occasional toddler were pasted to the mirrors.
As usual, the room was a gaggle of languages, of bitching, gossip and complaints. Complaints ranged from cheap tips, cheating lovers and menstrual cramps to aching feet.
In the midst of it, like a cool island, Cleo stood putting the last pins in her long, sable-colored hair. She was friendly enough with the other girls, Marcella thought, but not friends with them. She did her work and did it well, collected her money and went home alone.
So, Marcella remembered, had she in her time.
“There is a man asking about you.”
Cleo’s eyes, a deep, dark brown, met Marcella’s in the mirror. “Asking what?”
“Just asking. He’s handsome, maybe thirty, Irish. Dark hair, blue eyes. Well mannered.”
Cleo shrugged shoulders currently covered in a conservative gray pin-striped suit jacket. “I don’t know anyone like that.”
“He asked for you by name, told Karl you were a family connection.”
Cleo leaned forward to slick murderous red over her lips. “I don’t think so.”
“You in trouble?”
She shot the cuffs of the tailored white shirt she wore under the jacket. “No.”
“If he gives you any, just signal to Karl. He’ll show him out.” Marcella nodded. “The Irishman’s at the bar. You won’t miss him.”
Cleo slipped into the spike-heeled black pumps that completed her costume. “Thanks. I can handle him.”
“I think this is so.” Marcella laid a hand on her shoulde
r briefly, then moved on to break up an argument between two of the dancers over a red-spangled bra.
If she was concerned someone had come in and asked for her by name, Cleo didn’t show it. She was, after all, a professional. Whether dancing Swan Lake or peeling it off for Euro-trash, there were professional standards for a performer.
I don’t know any Irishmen, she thought as she clipped out to wait for her cue. And she certainly didn’t buy that anyone remotely connected to her family would trouble themselves to ask about her. Even if they’d tripped over her bleeding body in the street.
Probably just some asshole, she decided, who’d gotten her name from another customer and thought he might wrangle a cheap boink from an American stripper.
He was going to go home disappointed.
As her music came up, she pushed all thoughts but her routine out of her head. She counted the beats, and when the lights flashed on, Cleo erupted onto the stage.
At the bar, Gideon’s hand froze in the act of lifting his beer.
She was dressed like a man. Though no one would mistake her for one, he admitted. Not if you were blind and on the back of a galloping horse. But there was something primitively erotic about the way she moved inside that traditional pin-striped suit.
The music was hot, edgy American rock, and her lighting a steamy and smoky blue. He found it clever and ironic that she’d select Bruce Springsteen’s “Cover Me” to strip to.
She knew what she was about, he realized as she tugged the tailored jacket off her shoulders, moving, always moving, pulled it off.
While the others on the stage had been spinning or sliding, shaking or shimmying, this one was dancing. Sharp, complicated moves that demonstrated genuine style and talent.
Though when, with one of those sharp moves, she ripped the breakaway trousers aside, he lost track of the style for a moment.
Christ, she had legs, didn’t she?
She used the poles as well, doing three fast circles with those long legs cocked up. Her hair tumbled free, past her shoulders in a straight rainfall of rich brown. He didn’t see how she opened the shirt, but it was flying around her now, revealing a scrap of black lace over high, firm breasts.
He tried to tell himself they were likely manufactured, and either way they had nothing to do with him. But he found saliva pooling in his mouth when she stripped off the shirt.
To clear his throat, he sipped his beer, and watched her.
She’d made him from her first turn. She couldn’t see him clearly, and wasn’t concerned enough to worry about it. But she knew he was there, and that his attention was on her.
That was fine. That’s what she got paid for.
With her back to the audience, she slid a hand down her back, flicked open the catch of her bra. Crossing her arms over her breasts, she spun back. There was a light dew of sweat on her skin now, and a small grin—ice cold—on her lips as she made eye contact with the men in the audience she’d deemed most likely to part with folded money.
She tossed her hair back and, wearing nothing but the heels and a black G-string, lowered to a crouch so they could see what they were paying for.
She ignored the fingers sliding over her hips and registered the money tucked under the G-string.
She eased back when one overenthusiastic patron reached for her. In a move that could have been mistaken for playful, she wagged a finger at him. And thought, Asshole.
She came up in a one-armed backbend, then using her legs surged to her feet.
She played the other side of the stage in much the same way. But here she got a better look at the man at the bar. Their eyes met, held for two beats. He held up a bill, cocked his head.
Then he went back to sipping his beer.
SHE WISHED SHE’D been able to make out the denomination of the bill. But she thought it might be worth five minutes of her time to find out how much he’d pay.
Still, she took her time, cooled off in the shower, then pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. It was a rare thing for her to go out into the club after a performance, but she trusted Karl and the other muscle Marcella kept on tap to keep her from being hassled.
In any case, most of the patrons kept their attention onstage, toward the fantasy sex, rather than scoping out the real women in the area.
Except for Slick, she thought, at the bar. He wasn’t watching the stage. Though in her professional opinion the current act was one of the more creative ones. His gaze stayed on her as she crossed to the bar. And on her face—which she gave him points for—rather than on her tits.
“You want something, Slick?”
Her voice surprised him. It was smooth and silky and without any of the hard edge he’d expected from a woman in her line of work.
Her face did credit to her body. It was hot and sultry with those dark, almond-shaped eyes and the full, red-slicked mouth. There was a little mole, a beauty mark, he supposed you called it, just at the lower end of her right eyebrow.
Her skin was dusky, adding a touch of erotic gypsy.
She smelled of soap—another illusion shattered. And sipped idly from a tall bottle of water.
“I do if you’re Cleo Toliver.”
She leaned back on the bar. She wore tennis shoes now rather than heels, but the jeans were black and molded tight to her hips and legs.
“I don’t do private parties.”
“Do you talk?”
“When I have something to say. Who gave you my name?”
Gideon merely showed her the bill again, watched her gaze flick on it and narrow in speculation. “I think this should buy an hour’s conversation.”
“It might.” She’d reserve judgment on whether or not he was a moron, but at least he wasn’t cheap. She reached for the bill, annoyed when he moved it just out of reach.
“What time do you finish here?”
“Two. Look, why don’t you just tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you if I’m interested.”
“Conversation,” he said again and tore the bill in half. He handed her one part, pocketed the other. “If you want the rest of it, meet me after closing. The coffee shop in the Wenceslas Hotel. I’ll wait till two-thirty. If you don’t show, we’re both out fifty pounds.”
He finished his beer, set down the glass. “It was an entertaining performance, Miss Toliver, and lucrative from the looks of it. But it’s not every day you can make fifty pounds by sitting down and having a cup of coffee.”
She frowned when he turned to walk away. “You got a name, Slick?”
“Sullivan. Gideon Sullivan. You’ve got till two-thirty.”
Four
CLEO never missed a cue. But neither did she believe in giving her audience the appearance she’d rushed to hit one. Theater was rooted in illusions. And life, like the big guy had said, was just a bigger stage.
She strolled toward the coffee shop at two minutes to deadline.
If some jerk with a pretty face and a sexy voice wanted to pay her for some conversation, that was fine by her. She’d already determined the exchange rate from Irish pounds to Czech koruna, using the little calculator she carried in her bag to figure it to the last haleru. In her current position, the money would go a very long way.
She didn’t intend to make her living stripping off her clothes for a bunch of suckers for long. The fact was, she’d never intended to make her living, however temporary, dancing naked in a Prague strip club.
But she’d been stupid, Cleo could admit. She’d walked straight into a con, blinded by good looks and a clever line. And when a girl was flat-ass busted in Eastern Europe, in a city where she could barely manage the simplest phrase in the guidebook, she did what she could to make ends meet.
She had one thing on her side, she thought now. She never made the same mistake twice.
In that regard, at least, she was not her mother’s daughter.
The little restaurant was brightly lit, and there were a few patrons scattered around the tables having coffee or a late meal. The company,
such as it was, was a plus. Not that she was particularly worried about the Irish guy making a move on her. She could handle herself.
She spotted him at a corner booth, drinking coffee and reading a book, with a cigarette smoking away in a black plastic ashtray. With those dark, romantic looks, she thought, he’d pass for some kind of artist, a writer maybe. No, she decided, a poet. Some struggling poet who wrote dark, esoteric free verse and had come to the great city for inspiration as others had before him.
Looks, she thought with a smirk, were always deceiving.
He glanced up as she slid into the booth across from him. His eyes, a deep and crystal blue in the poetic face, were the type that shot straight to a woman’s glands.
Good thing, Cleo acknowledged, she was immune.
“You cut it close,” he commented and continued to read.
She merely shrugged, then turned to the waitress who stepped up to the booth. “Coffee. Three eggs, scrambled. Bacon. Toast. Thanks.” Cleo smiled when she saw Gideon studying her over the top of his book. “I’m hungry.”
“I suppose what you do works up an appetite.”
He marked his place, set the book aside. Yeats, Cleo noted. It figured.
“That’s the point, isn’t it? Working up appetites.” She stretched out her legs as the waitress poured her coffee. “How did you like my act?”
“It’s better than most.” She hadn’t removed her stage makeup. In the bright lights she looked both hard and sexy. He imagined she knew it. Had planned it. “Why do you do it?”
“Unless you’re a Broadway scout, Slick, that’s my business.” Watching him, she lifted a hand, rubbed her thumb and two fingers together.
Gideon took the half bill out of his pocket, then slid it under his book. “Talk first.” He’d already outlined how he wanted to approach the matter with her and had decided the direct—well, fairly direct—route would work best.