by Lucy Farago
So was the secrecy just to keep the preacher’s name out of the papers? Was it as simple as that? Or was the saintly act to hide a devil in high heels? Had the daughter rebelled against the famous father? He discarded the idea. If that had been her reasoning, she’d have gone public. On the flip side, helping might come naturally to her, but in a club? Why not a shelter for women? There had to be a reason for a woman like her to end up in a strip club, just as there had to be a reason a killer had targeted Heart’s Desire.
“You’re early.”
The sharp edge of her voice told him this was going to be harder than he’d hoped. Then again, he’d done this on purpose. “Sorry,” he replied. Glancing at his watch, he’d known it was nine and he’d told her ten. But he was hoping to catch her a little off guard.
He went back to his car and waited. A buzz hummed overhead as the wrought iron fence eased open, then closed after he’d driven through.
Getting out of the car, he rolled up the sleeves of his white fitted shirt, glad to be rid of the suit. As he walked up the concrete driveway, he wondered what she was wearing, then ground his teeth. “Get a grip,” he muttered. “Not your type.”
He couldn’t afford distractions. Instinct told him the murderer was still in Vegas and in all likelihood would strike again. Contrary to what everyone saw on television, serial killers didn’t often have a set plan. This one did.
Today, he’d get answers. Then maybe he could put the preacher’s daughter and her luscious legs in the care of the feds. If she hadn’t been expecting him this early, he hoped she looked like shit, one of those women who required plenty of wake-up time before they were ready to greet the world. It would help to keep his mind on the case, where it should be, and not on her.
He should have insisted they meet at the club, because luck was not on his side. She waited for him, all that porcelain skin set off by the dark red wood of her front door. Hair tied back in a high ponytail, this woman needed no make-up.
“I’m sorry Mr.—Beck, I didn’t expect you this early. I was about to go for a run.”
He hadn’t failed to notice the ivory running bra or the matching shorts hugging her hips. She extended her hand to greet him, but his eyes locked onto the tiny tattoo below her navel. He couldn’t resist. Propping his shades on his head, he bent in to take a better look and had to clench his jaw when her stomach muscles flexed. Considering where those wings trailed, he figured it would be a little presumptuous to ask to see the rest. Plus he doubted she’d appreciate the bulge in his pants.
“Angel wings,” she informed him. “My friends’ idea.”
“The tattoo or the wings?” he asked, tamping the urge to touch the colored ink embellishing silky skin.
“The wings,” she said, leading the way.
He stifled a groan. The back view of those shorts was even better than the front.
“Does it mean something?” he asked, hoping she didn’t turn around and notice him staring at her assets.
“Sort of.”
“Now you have me curious.”
“Let’s just say it’s kind of a good luck charm and drop it.”
Now he really wanted to know, but he’d drop the subject for now.
She led him into a sunken living room and pointed to the couch. “Want some water?” She glanced over her shoulder. “No fizz.” Flashing him a saucy smile, she sauntered toward the bar on the far side of the cozy room. On her way, she grabbed a white zippered hoodie off the couch and slipped it on.
“Thanks,” he answered, but only for the pleasure of watching her sweet ass walk away.
Christian pushed his keys into the front pocket of his jeans and looked around the large room he’d already been through, searching for a distraction more than to admire the decor. Oddly on the masculine side, the tan walls were a nice contrast to the oversized couches. A deep russet, they matched the clay tile throughout the front hall and living room. He set his sunglasses on a blue mosaic coffee table and sat.
“You like southwestern?” He admired the wheel-like rustic chandelier.
She shrugged. “It suits the adobe. That piece is an antique.” She pointed to the light fixture. “It’s from some medieval castle in England. I had it converted from candles to electric. This is more casual,” she said, talking with her hand. “I’m not really a girly girl.”
Christian raised an eyebrow as she walked over and handed him the bottled water.
“What?” she asked.
“Except for today, I haven’t noticed you wearing anything but heels.” He’d enjoyed every minute of seeing those toned legs propped on pencil-thin stilettos. He couldn’t deny it. He was a leg man.
“That’s different. When I don’t have to dress up, I don’t.”
Even dressed to work out, Christian couldn’t see her lounging in sweats. Of course, he could see her out of those sweats and covered in a sheen of moisture for different reasons. He forced himself to keep eye contact when where he wanted to look might piss her off.
“So can we start?” he asked, better to stay on track.
“Sure, ask away.”
“Look,” he started, hoping she wouldn’t blow a fuse, “I know who your father is.”
She remained standing, opening her own water bottle with a forceful twist, her evil glare a sure sign she wasn’t happy.
He’d better say something before she kicked him out. “It’s not rocket science. You changed your name to protect his. Right?”
She stared at him, her expression cautious.
He trudged on. “You were the sole inheritor of your grandmother’s estate and were named the chairman of the board.” To say he’d been relieved would be to admit he cared how she made her money; to deny it would make him a liar.
“What I don’t know is why you’re not sitting in Boston behind a big-ass desk.” He wanted Ms. Anderson to be one of the good guys. He wasn’t sure why it mattered, just that it did. The house, the car, none of it was bought from the shirts off the strippers’ backs. So why the strip club?
She brought the water bottle to her lips and drank.
That one simple swallow, the tip of her of head, the parting of those pink lips, and he forgot what they were talking about. How the hell did she do that?
She smacked down the sipping spout on her bottle, jarring him. Something flashed in her eyes, too brief for him to place. “What else do you know?”
He started to tell her but her phone interrupted them.
“Excuse me.” She walked over to the bar to answer it, again gifting him with a perfect view of her ass. “Hello.” Slowly, she turned, a smile crossing her lips. Her eyes closed and she let out a long sigh.
Whatever she’d heard on the other end had made her happy, more than happy—relieved.
“Thanks, Nick, you’re the best. Call me when you reach Vegas.” She hung up.
With a little more lift to her walk, she made her way back, setting her water bottle on the table. Kicking off white sneakers, she sat, tucking her feet beneath her legs. She propped an elbow on the back of the couch and leaned her cheek onto her hand. The patio doors were tinted, allowing only enough sun to bask the room in a comfortable glow. He knew exactly what she’d look like with a sunset behind her.
“Run often?” he asked, needing a reason to look at the running shoes, not the owner.
“Three, four times a week.”
Whatever that phone call had been about, it had changed her mood.
“I love to run,” he offered, hoping to keep this casual, non-confrontational. “The opportunity just hasn’t presented itself lately. I’m getting soft.” He patted his belly.
Her eyes drifted over his body. “You don’t look like the couch potato type.” She crossed her ankles and then uncrossed them, trying to get comfortable. That, or he’d just made her nervous. “Okay, enough with the pleasantries. Spill. What else did your fancy PI work tell you about me?”
“You write a lot of checks to the local colleges and universities.” She
paid for the dancers’ educations.
“Is that it?”
“Isn’t it enough?” he asked, getting the impression she was hoping it was. So what else was he missing? “I just don’t know why? You worked with group homes for years. So I get it. You’re used to helping street kids. But this? Why not stick to counseling? Answer me that, and I promise I won’t tell anyone who your daddy is.” Not that he was going to anyway. The last thing the case needed was a media frenzy.
“You’ve known who my father is for a while. If you were going to rat me out to the press, you’d have done so already. And if you bothered to open your eyes you’d see I am counseling. Only the women come to me.”
“There had to be an easier way other than taking on a profession the media would have a field day with.”
“True, and regardless of my less than stellar relationship with my father, his ministry does some great work. I didn’t want to mar that with a scandal that in reality has nothing to do with him. So I changed my name. The simple truth, Mr… . Beck, is I love working with these women. There’s no reason for me to hide that. Anyone who frequents the club can see they are like family to me and in return I to them.”
Something he guessed her estranged father wasn’t supplying. “But how did you end up in a strip club?” It didn’t make sense to him.
“Why would I explain my reasons to a sanctimonious ass like you?”
Stunned speechless, it took him some seconds to recover. “I am not sanctimonious.” He’d been called a lot of insulting things, some rightly so, but never that.
“Sure you are. You judged me without knowing me and because I run a strip club you figured you were better than me. I’d call that sanctimonious. Wouldn’t you?”
She had him there. “You’re right, and I owe you an apology. I’m sorry for thinking you would be like every other slime making money off these women.”
“That isn’t an apology,” she pointed out. “That was a ‘forgive me for jumping to the right assumption.’”
“Okay,” he said, conceding, “but you have to admit, you run a strip club. People expect the worst.”
“This is Vegas. There are many, many kinds of clubs. Any tourist knows that. You assumed my club was sleazy. Why?”
“If I tell you, will you tell me why a strip club?”
She considered his offer then nodded, reached for her water bottle and took another swallow.
Maybe if she understood him a little better, she’d open up more. “When I worked for the feds I was assigned to a special task force. My job was to find and shut down human traffickers.”
She choked on her water.
“You okay?” he asked, waiting for her throat to clear.
She pressed a hand to her chest and breathed. “Yup, the spouts on these bottles are only good for running. Go on.”
“Well, some of them used strip clubs as covers.”
“Ah, I see. So you have an aversion to strip clubs in general, not just mine?”
“Something like that.” His sister had been found in the alley of a strip club, the owner a fucking pimp who claimed Claire had been turning tricks for him. So yes, he had an aversion to strip clubs, one that made his skin crawl at the very thought of her doing what that lying cocksucker had claimed she’d done. “Your turn, or are you going to make me dig?”
There it was again, that flash. Not anger, something else.
Maggie wasn’t going to tell him the whole truth. She wouldn’t admit why she needed the club more than the club needed her. She certainly wasn’t about to open herself up to another lecture on how she reacted carelessly and without thought to her own safety. She got enough of those sermons from her friends. This man had judged her once and would do so again.
Although the police had kept her name out of the press, and the FBI had had their own reasons for sealing the case documents, she didn’t know how much clout and power Beck and his agency had. But if he’d figured out her involvement in the Desilva case, she doubted he’d be keeping it to himself. Even so, the file wouldn’t tell him the paralyzing fear she’d experienced on that loading dock. Nowhere was it written down, the shame she had endured—and endured still—at not being able to defend herself. When it had come time to choose between her life and that bastard’s, she’d frozen.
So no, she wasn’t going to tell him the whole truth. However, she saw no harm in admitting some of it, especially if it would keep him from digging further into her life. No one could know that she, not Shannon, was the club’s owner. The press would ignore her reasons and go for the jugular: her father’s. The dust would settle and the truth would eventually come out, but by then who knew how much damage his church would sustain from the scandal.
“Okay, here it is,” she said, hoping to appease his curiosity. “It’s really not that big a deal. When I first moved to Vegas, I supplemented my income with bartending. My dad had cut me off and I, like some of these women, needed the money. The state didn’t see the need to pay people who stood between kids and jail a decent income.” Things had changed a little, but front line workers still didn’t drive fancy cars.
“One of my runaways had been disappearing for hours at a time, and from the wads of cash hidden under her bed, everyone assumed she’d gone back to her old ways.”
A shadow crept over his face. “Had she?” he asked with genuine concern for a kid he didn’t know. Maggie wondered why. Certainly people had adverse reactions to hearing about children and prostitution, but men usually reacted with anger. Beck’s reaction came off as … personal? It would seem Mr. Beck had his own story to tell.
She shook her head. “On the plus side, she’d come to agree it was wrong of men to use her that way. We’d reached the angry stage of her recovery. For most, that means demanding control over her life. She’d decided stripping was her answer.”
When he looked confused, she explained. “She wasn’t forced to take her clothes off.”
“But,” he said cutting in, “men were still paying her. Didn’t she see it as demeaning?”
“No. There are a lot of reasons why women choose to strip. For this teenager, it was still her choice. It was wrong for her because she had serious self-esteem issues, and she was underage. Decent clubs mandate twenty-one, others eighteen. She was neither. It was the only way I got her out of there.”
“You seem a little lackadaisical about it.”
“There you go again, being judgmental.”
“Sorry, go on with the story.” He pretended to twist a key in a lock over his mouth.
Maybe he was really trying. “Don’t confuse my logical approach with not caring. Even Spock cared. He just didn’t like anyone pointing it out.”
He laughed. “You a Trekkie?”
“A world where no one has to suffer? We should all be Trekkies. Look, when you counsel on the streets, you learn to remove yourself from the equation. You don’t take what’s said or done to you personally. You won’t survive otherwise. Most of them don’t mean it. They try to scare you off or test how far you’ll go, to see if you really care, or for shits and giggles.”
“That sucks.”
“Sometimes, but you develop a thick skin.” Unfortunately, the wall needed to keep you safe could make you forget that you weren’t really protected.
“Long story short, I enlisted the women in the club to impart some of their wisdom to the girl and got her to see stripping wasn’t the answer for her. My relationship with the dancers grew from there and I started going in more often.” She made sure to avoid the stage at all costs. “Like I said, I was struggling to pay my bills, so when I was offered a job at the club, I took it. The guy who owned it was a little creepy but fair to the girls. Unfortunately, his problem with heroin alerted the IRS. When they stepped in, some loser wanted to buy the place. Shannon had the cash,”—Maggie’s inheritance—“and one thing led to another. So here I am. Running a strip club.”
“And paying for their school?”
“It’s a tax write-
off.”
He folded his arms, not buying it.
She shrugged. “The clubs make money I don’t need. So I fund it back to the dancers. Happy? Does that change your holier-than-thou attitude?”
He grimaced. “I admit I was a hundred percent wrong about you.”
Maggie got up and walked away. Away from those jarring brown eyes. “Whatever.” She’d told him the truth, or part of it, not to get him to like her but to stop him from digging into her life. What did she care if yet another person judged her? Her own father had done it. Others would do the same. But now that she’d told him how she’d come to be at Heart’s Desire, his opinion insanely meant something. Why, she wasn’t sure. “I’ve gotten it from lots of people. I’ve heard it all before you know—more, and worse.”
“Still, I shouldn’t have allowed personal bias to cloud my judgment. It’s something I pride myself on never doing, and again, I’m sorry.”
She nodded, accepting his apology. “Look, it’s going to get hot soon and I want my run. What else do you want to ask me?” Answer his questions, she told herself, then make him leave. Not because he made her uncomfortable, but because he needed to be out there, helping the police.
“Yeah, I get that.” He rubbed the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders.
“Stiff?”
“Tension headache coming on.” A pained expression clouded his face. “You wouldn’t happen to have an aspirin?”
“You don’t need pills. You need to relax your uptight ass.”
He growled, and Maggie laughed to cover the shiver rippling down her spine.
“You know, a nice person would just get me a pill.”
“Well, I agree, you need to take one.”
He opened his mouth to refute her insult, but then shrugged.
“Okay, I’ll do you one better,” she offered. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, right? Admittedly, she didn’t like the look of pain marring his face. “You let me go on my run, and I’ll let you use my gym. Deal?” Maybe if he relaxed a little he’d focus on finding the killer and quit investigating her. “When I get back we’ll finish this conversation.”