Plain Jane and Mr. Wrong (Plain Jane Series Book 4)
Page 1
Plain Jane
and
Mr. Wrong
Plain Jane series
BOOK 4
Tmonique Stephens
BLURB
The last thing Jentry Playne needs in her life is a man. Any man, particularly a rich, bossy, criminal mastermind who runs New York City. A sick twist of fate throws her in his path, and nothing she does lessens the impact on her psyche and the ensuing wreckage in her life. Is she interested? No… Yes! Even though the man is dangerously sexy, she can’t succumb to the temptation. She’s bitter and hostile and does a piss poor job at hiding it. Left alone to pay her bills and raise her daughter in peace, that’s all she wants. And no one will tell her what she can and cannot do. Not her family and not the man she should fear instead of desire.
Harden Gage is in the crosshairs of the Russian mob, not that he gives a damn. As the bastard head of the Syndicate, he’ll kill anything that gets in his way and keeps him from what he’s owed, which is everything. He wants it all, and that includes Jentry Playne. The cousin of his best friend’s fiancée, she’s off-limits. He promised to protect her, and that’s precisely what he’ll do, protect her from the Russian oligarch willing to kill to reclaim the territory he lost and anything else that wants to hurt her. That doesn’t mean he will protect her from himself. Because in love and war, it’s all fair game.
And Harden plays to win!
Copyright © 2020 Tracy Stephens
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions
By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of copyright owner.
Please Note
The reverse engineering, uploading, and/or distributing of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my drinking buddy, beta reader, and bestie, Charitee, what would I do without you? Don’t answer that question! Your friendship has kept me sane.
Thank you to my editor, Nadine Winningham and my cover artist Cover by Combs.
I couldn’t do what I do without all of you! Writing is a solitary endeavor, but it’s not a journey any author takes alone.
DEDICATION
For my daughter Cyré.
Some of the best moments of my life, I’ve spent with you.
You continue to be my inspiration and my reason for striving forward.
For my Mother.
Decades later and I still miss you.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Books
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Epilogue
About the Author
Books
Descendants of Ra series
Entrapped Prequel (coming soon)
Eternity Book 1
Everlasting Book 2
Evermore Book 3
Encore Book 4
Forever Novella Book 4.5
Entwined (Book 5 coming soon)
The UnHallowed Series.
Only Tonight (Standalone Novella)
Only The Fallen (Book 1)
Only One I Want (Book 2)
Only You (Book 3)
Only One I’ll Have (Book 4)
Only One Little Sin (Book 5 coming soon)
Plain Jane Series
Reading Order
Plain Jane and the Hitman
Plain Jane and the Billionaire
Plain Jane and the Billionaire’s Seduction
Plain Jane and Mr. Wrong
Standalone Novels
If I Love You
Plain Jane and the Bad Boy
Chapter One
OCTOBER
Jentry Playne, the black sheep of the Playne family, watched as her cousin Calista was carried away in the arms of her billionaire lover after she’d stormed into Jentry’s job and ordered her to go into hiding.
What the hell.
As if Jentry were a child to be ordered around, and not a twenty-year-old grown ass woman.
How dare she!
Jentry couldn’t lay all the blame for this broadsided, undermining move on her cousin. This had the signature of Laverne Playne all over it. Jentry would bet her small paycheck her mother had put Calista up to coming to her job and humiliating her in front of her boss.
Finally get a decent job and they try to get me fired! “I’m going back to work,” she announced to no one in particular and snaked her way through the testosterone drenched hallway. Too many men crowded the space, posturing like animals marking their territory. She wasn’t impressed.
She had a bottle service going. Three bottles of Cristal to be exact. The tip would be enough to pay her rent and get her out of the hole she was in. It was more like a bottomless pit than a hole. The couple hundred she’d earn as a bottle service girl would also pay her babysitter. That bill was two weeks behind. If she didn’t have three hundred for Mrs. Francis when she picked Allie up, she wouldn’t have a sitter anymore. Anything left would be grocery money.
She pressed the elevator button and folded her arms, waiting impatiently as men filtered around her. Back to their posts they went. Not one said a word to her. Thank God. The last thing she needed was attention from any man.
Back on the main floor, she made it halfway across the dining room when she realized her table was empty. The party was gone, the table was clean, and Marilyn was showing new customers to the table.
Jentry rushed to Hillary at the beer station. “Where is she?”
Pink hair glimmering under the recessed lighting over the station, Hillary asked, “Who?” Not slowing as she filled a pitcher of beer.
“Iris!” Jentry hissed. “I left that bitch to watch my table for a few minutes and she’s gone along with my customers.” And my fucking tip.
“All I know is she closed the tecket on the table and clocked out. ’Er shift was over.” Born and raised in Ireland, Hillary had been in America since she was fourteen, and her Irish brogue was still thick, though she tried to hide it. She gave Jentry a sad smile and didn’t spill a drop of beer when she switched to a second pitcher.
Fuck! She didn’t have time to cry when there was still time on the clock and money to be made.
“What ded Bruno want?” Hillary pressed. She wouldn’t leave it alone. Gossip was a commodity in this place.
“He had an inventory question.” It was nobody’s business Calista and Julius Morgan were here to drag her to some house on Montauk, “for your own protection,” Calista had screamed in Jentry’s face. She was in danger.
No! Calista was in danger. Jentry was just the poor relation. No Russian mobster would waste his time kidnapping her. She wasn’t worth the gas it would take to do the deed.
“An inventahry question to you when Ralph does inventahry for the bar?” Hillary side-eyed Jentry.
“What’s with the thousand questions!” Jentry snapped and returned to the bar only to find Nicole in her spot. Nicole, who didn’t know how to sling drinks, but was perky and pretty with her red hair, slinky size four body, and thirty-two triple Ds surgically attached to her chest. There she was pouring a sloppy drink and collecting a twenty for her effort.
Jentry marched up to the bar, prepared to send her back to wherever she came from, only to be blocked by Ralph.
“Where were you?” Spittle collected in the corners of Ralph’s mouth beneath his ratty mustache. He dragged his pudgy hand through his greasy, slicked back hair, and hiked his pants higher over his flat ass, trying to secure it under his beer belly. How had a high-class place hired such a lowlife?
“Mr. Neritti needed me.”
His eyebrows shot to his hairline. “He did? For what?” His gaze dropped and he gave her a calculating and lascivious grin. “You let him have a taste?” His hot breath fanned her face, violating her personal bubble.
Her gag reflex kicked in, but she ruthlessly squashed it. Dry heaving in your supervisor’s face was a no-no. “Can I return to work, sir?”
“You did, didn’t you?” His capped-toothy grin stretched across his broad face and his eyes trailed down her face to her breasts and groin.
She felt it, the disgusting intimacy of his nasty attention. The old her—pre-motherhood—would’ve been flattered even though it came from a pig.
“Maybe when Bruno’s done…” He strolled away, but not before placing a lingering caress to her arm. His touch made her want to cut the limb off and grow another. At least this time it was her arm and not her breast or ass.
She gritted her teeth and headed behind the bar because she needed the job. Bills had to get paid and Allie had to eat. Stepping to the middle of the bar, she started taking orders. The first, a martini neat. Nicole winked at her as she filled an order of scotch on the rocks for a table of five.
“You vanished. Why?”
Was everyone going to ask her the same question? No use lying when Bruno requesting her presence hadn’t been a secret. He’d walked right up, crooked two fingers at her, and like a good employee, she fell in line behind him.
The first day on the job she’d learned the hierarchy of the club. Harden Gage—the boss. Stay off his radar. Stay out of his way. Bruno Nerriti—counselor/head underboss, self-appointed bodyguard, and best friend. Nicer than the boss, but not by much. Stay off his radar. Stay out of his way. Leonid Uryved, Pavel Kureyev, Nick Wright, his underbosses in charge of … whatever. They say jump. You didn’t ask how high. You jumped until they said stop, even if it took hours. So far, none had been assholes.
Nicole invaded her personal space, waiting for an answer. “Why are you here?” Jentry asked with a smile on her face for the all-male clientele. “I got this. Go do something else.”
“Darlin’.” A customer leaned over the bar, waving a Benjamin.
His address could’ve been directed toward any of them, but Nicole bumped Jentry out of the way. “What can I get you, sir?”
“Bottle of champagne. Another hundred to the lady that brings it to me.” He shoved the bill into Nicole’s cleavage and sauntered away.
Jentry had never seen Nicole move faster. She practically ran into the cold storage room behind the display mirror and returned within seconds with a service tray. Smile plastered on her face, she headed for the group of men relaxing in a booth at the back of the room. They were middle-aged and moneyed. Wall Street types. She doubted they had entry to the lower level or upper level. The public had access to the restaurant until 11:00 p.m. After that it was members only, and the members had access to everything else. Legal and otherwise.
“Greedy betch!” Hillary said through a winning smile. With her pink hair and toothy grin, she was a double for DC Comic’s Harley Quinn. And all men loved a bad girl.
“Yeah. She’s greedy and getting paid,” Jentry grumbled.
It was a slow night and Nicole had made two hundred dollars in fifteen seconds. “How much have you cleared so far?” Jentry whispered to Hillary.
“Three eighty, I think.” A man at the end of the bar held up his empty glass. Hillary rushed over.
The weight of forty bucks stuffed into her hidden pocket didn’t register because it wasn’t enough.
Fuck!
Time to grind. Smile bright on wide, flirt on ten, Jentry worked her section of the bar. The hours ticked by. Her back ached. Her feet hurt. She should’ve stopped for a meal, but the money trickled in and she stayed focused. As focused as a single mother could be, which was laser, pinpoint, locked on target, focused.
By the time the night wound down it was three in the morning. Her turn to leave early—as if 3:00 a.m. were early—Jentry made her way to her locker at the back of the staff lounge. The room was empty. Good, because the last thing she wanted was to be waylaid by bullshit.
The peacoat barely covered her ass, which didn’t matter when she yanked on her jeans under her skirt and slipped the skirt off over the denim. She shook it out and placed it in the locker. It was wearable for another shift, at least. The shirt and bra she’d wash out in the sink and hang both in the bathroom to dry for tomorrow. She kicked off her Payless heels in favor of her boots and sighed at the pleasure of wiggling her toes without pain.
The door opened and Laurel trooped in. “Hey, there.” She waved as she strutted to the staff fridge in her six-inch clear heels. Her microskirt sat low on her hips highlighting the red straps of her thong. The chain mail halter played peek-a-boo with her nipples perched on top of her perfect breasts.
“Hey,” Jentry responded, studying the woman under her lashes. She was pretty, bleach blond hair with dark roots and eyebrows, size two figure, petite everywhere but her boobs. Jentry never asked anyone what went on in the room on the lower level behind the swimming pool and sauna. Jentry was far from stupid. Those girls made money. Lots of it. And it wasn’t from massaging oil into their client’s flabby skin.
Jentry had no room to be judgmental, not when Carl had put her on the corner of his block to earn money for him. Bile rose in her throat. Young and foolish, two deadly combinations, and sh
e had been the epitome of both. The tips in her pocket still weighed nothing. Could she…?
Her mouth opened to ask the question, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Things weren’t that desperate, yet. Who knew what the next week, day, hour, would bring?
It would bring her one day closer to being in a pair of clear heels and a thong. She could strip again. That may be a better option. Maybe not. Then again, maybe yes. God, she didn’t want to do either.
“Have a goodnight.” Laurel waved with a yogurt in her hand.
Jentry’s stomach growled. She ignored it. Coat buttoned, scarf wrapped around her head and neck, purse on her shoulder, she headed for the service entrance which let out into the back alley. She wasn’t concerned. Harden Gage took security seriously. There was a guard at the door and stationed outside, plus cameras. She ran into a few waitresses bundled up and prepared to brace the cold. They all left together, under the watchful eye of the boss’s guards. None she knew or cared to know. None approached her, other than to stare and give that grin men give when they’re stripping the clothes from your body, leaving you vulnerable, leaving them in control. Except for Ralph. He liked to touch.
No one complained, however. No one dared. He was part of the inner circle. Management. Harden Gage’s right-hand man, to hear him talk. When his hand grazed your tits or ass, you kept walking. Pretend it didn’t happen. Eye on the big picture. Not the fine print.
This was the best job her GED could supply. The hours were good, and the pay was better than any fast-food restaurant would provide.
She took the subway home. New York, the city that never sleeps. No statement was ever truer. Twenty people occupied the subway car with her. The car with the conductor. It was the safest at 3:00 a.m. No express service in the wee hours of the morning. This time of night the ride from Lower Manhattan to Hollis, Queens, took an hour. Good grief.
She emerged from the subway an hour later with only a short four-block walk to her building. Hurrying along, her soft-soled boots barely made a sound on the pavement as she hunched against the brisk wind slamming into her at each intersection. Weariness walked beside her. If only she could sleep for a year. She snorted a plume of condensed air, knowing she’d be lucky to get two hours of sleep once she picked up Allie. It was tempting to leave her at the babysitter, but she couldn’t afford it. As it were, she had half the money she owed. One fifty. Payday was two days away. With her tips from tomorrow and the weekend, Mrs. Francis would have all her money. She just had to be a bit more patient.