Distressed jeans encased his legs, and black boots adorned his feet. His black shirt pulled taut across his chest, and the left sleeve was rolled up with what I assumed was a pack of cigarettes wrapped in it.
Dark ink swirled around his forearm and traveled up into his sleeve, and my fingers itched to pull up the fabric to see the tattoo. His arms were muscled and tanned from being out in the sun, and his neck showed another hit of ink. I wondered if it connected to the ink on his arm. Tattoos had never really been my thing, but seeing Playboy made me rethink my opposition to them.
His jawline looked like it had been chiseled from stone and sprinkled with stubble.
Mustache.
The man had a mustache, and I had never seen something sexier in my life. My nether regions gave a slight ache at the thought of feeling the stubbly hair between my legs.
Focus, Raelyn. I hadn’t even spoken one word to the guy, and I was already imaging what his mouth would feel like on me. If this was any indication, I could see why he got the road name of Playboy.
“I heard you were looking for me, darlin’.”
My eyes snapped to his, and I realized he had ended his perusal of me way before I had finished gaping at him. “I, uh, well, yeah.”
Real smooth. From the moment I had left my house and driven to the clubhouse, I had been confident and determined to convince Playboy to help me. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Now, it seemed like I couldn’t string a complete and coherent sentence together.
“I think you’re at a little bit of an advantage seeing as you know my name but I don’t have a clue what yours is.”
Even his voice was rugged and beautiful. How? How was that freaking possible? And, of course he wouldn’t know my name, let alone even know I existed. Playboy was the type of man who would never, in a million years, look my way, let alone know my name.
“Uh, Raelyn. Well, some people call me Rae, but I’m Raelyn. You can call me Raelyn. Raelyn.” He could also call me Rain Man. I cringed and turned to look back down the hallway. I took a deep breath and forced my gaze to return to Playboy. “My name is Raelyn, and I need to talk to you.” There, that was what I intended to say all along. I needed the past thirty seconds to be erased so I could start over.
“Don’t know how much we have to talk about when I’ve never met you before, darlin'.”
The endearment rolled off his lips too easily, and I knew he wasn’t calling me anything special.
“If you let me in, I can explain.”
He eyed me closely. “Even if you explain, I don’t know what the hell you think I can do for you.”
I knew getting through the door was going to be the hardest part of all of this. His name might have been Playboy, and he may have been good with the ladies, but did that mean he let just anyone into his room? Obviously not. “It’s about Billie Jean.”
He tipped his head to the side. “How do you know Billie Jean?”
It was a valid question. Anyone who knew Billie Jean and then met me would wonder how the hell we even knew each other. Billie Jean had a blunt chin-length haircut that was ever changing colors. She loved wearing anything leather, and she had a panache for piercings. It didn’t matter where they were, she loved them. The only holes that were man-made on me were in my ears. My hair was mousey brown, and I favored wearing jeans and sweatshirts. Exact opposites.
“I’ve known her for a while.”
That was a slight understatement. We were twins. I had known her every second of my life. That was awhile, right?
“You didn’t answer my question.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “I’ll tell you if you let me in.”
Whether being her sister was going to be in my favor or not was still to be seen. She talked about Playboy helping her out, but I half wondered if she exaggerated everything she had told me. Billie Jean had a knack of spinning an interesting story that always made you wonder the validity of what she said. The bones of the story were true, but she always put on flair to make it exciting.
“You’re not her girlfriend.”
I wrinkled my nose. “No, I’m not,” I stated plainly.
Billie Jean had a few girlfriends she rotated through, but I obviously wasn’t one of them. Hello, twins. I hoped for the day that she would find the girl she wanted to actually stay with, but now I was worried about whether she would ever get that chance or if she was dead somewhere.
Playboy mumbled and stepped to the side. “I might regret this.”
He wasn’t going to. I slipped into the room and tried to ignore the fact that my breasts brushed against his arm. Focus, Raelyn. “I promise you won’t.”
“You’re not the first woman to tell me that.” He closed the door and turned to me.
I stood next to his bed and tried to not cower like a lost little girl. It wasn’t working.
My hands fidgeted at my sides with the seam of my jeans, and I bit my lip. Not exactly confident and sure looking.
“So, how do you know Billie Jean?”
I cleared my throat. “Uh, how do you know Billie Jean?” Yeah, I was an idiot. Answer a question with a question. Facepalm.
Playboy shook his head and chuckled. He pulled the pack cigarettes out of his sleeve and tapped one out. He stuck it in the corner of his mouth and tossed the pack on the dresser next to the bed. “Can’t believe I left Bray at the club for this.”
Hmph. I clamped my mouth shut to not ask who Bray was. Not my business. “Billie Jean is my sister. We’re twins. And you can’t smoke in here.” Yeah, I had gone from being meek and mild to telling Playboy he couldn’t smoke in his own room. I needed to get a damn grasp on what the heck I was doing.
Play pulled a lighter out of his pocket and rolled his thumb over the wheelie thing to spark it. He held it to the cigarette and inhaled deep. He tossed the lighter in the direction of the pack of cigarettes and blew out a plume of smoke. “You really think I’m going to believe that you and Billie Jean are related?”
I waved my hand in front of my face to diffuse the smoke and pulled my phone out of my pocket. I had expected this. It really was hard to believe that Billie Jean and I shared blood. I pulled up my first piece of photographic evidence. “This was us, senior year.”
I held the phone up in his direction. The photo was from almost eight years ago, but you could see the resemblance between Billie Jean and me. We obviously weren’t identical twins. Billie Jean was slender and had a dancer’s build. I, on the other hand, looked more like a plump couch potato.
Playboy stepped toward me and squinted at the picture. “That doesn’t even look like Billie Jean.”
I rolled my eyes and turned the phone back to me. “That’s because Billie Jean hadn’t found her love for tattoos and piercings yet,” I grumbled. I was going to have to pull out some more recent ones if I really wanted to convince him. “Last Halloween.”
It was a great picture of Billie Jean, but it wasn’t exactly very flattering of me. We had gone as a group for Halloween as the Village People. I was the only one out of the group who took it very literally and dressed up with mustache and authentic manly police uniform. Billie Jean and her four friends from the club had dressed up as a sexy construction worker, sailor, cowboy, biker, and Indian. Can you guess which one of us went home alone that night?
Playboy squinted hard at the photo. “Is that a mustache?”
I snatched the phone away and scowled. “I didn’t connect the Village People as being sexy, okay?” I shoved my phone back in my pocket and realized Playboy was standing right in front of me. “Now, can we move on from the fact that Billie Jean and I are related?”
Playboy again just stared at me. He inhaled on his cigarette. “So you’re related to one of the girls from the club. Still don’t understand what you want from me.”
“I can’t find Billie Jean.”
“She works tonight?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t been able to talk to her for the past four days.”
&
nbsp; Playboy moved to the long dresser and tapped his cigarette in the ashtray. “I haven’t seen her.”
“I’m not asking if you’ve seen her. I know something happened to her, and I need your help to find her.” Might as well get straight to the point. I was a duck out of water in Billie Jean’s world. We may have been sisters, but that didn’t mean I traveled in the same circles that she did.
“How do you know something happened to her?”
“Because I just know.”
Call it twin intuition or whatever. Billie Jean and I talked every day. Everyday. Even if she was running out the door to work and I was tucking myself into bed, Billie Jean and I talked all of the time.
“And why am I supposed to help you?”
The next hurdle I knew I was going to face. I got in the door, and now, I needed to convince Playboy to help me. There really wasn’t much I had to offer besides two things.
I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “I’ve got four thousand dollars.”
Playboy laughed. “So do I, darlin'.” He nodded to the bedside table. “Three in there and five in the dresser. You’re offering something I already have.”
I thought that might be a snag in my plan. Granted, I had hoped like hell I wouldn’t have to offer the next thing. “Four thousand dollars...and I’ll do anything you want.”
Playboy quirked his eyebrow, and a smirk spread across his lips. “Now we’re talking.”
I had awoken something inside of Playboy, and I prayed to God I was woman enough to follow through with my proposition.
*
Chapter Three
Playboy
A deal with a Bastard...
She was different.
So fucking different.
The thing that got me and I couldn’t take my mind off of were her fucking eyes.
Vivid, frosty blue. They pierced through me, and I felt she could see all my scars and doubts. I was good at putting on a confident façade, but Raelyn seemed to be the one who could break through with her innocence and awkward confidence.
She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
I was open to whatever she had in mind if it meant she would stay in my room for a bit longer. I’d had instant attraction before, but it usually died off as soon as it happened. Two minutes with Raelyn and I wanted to know a whole hell of a lot more than just what she would feel like beneath me.
“I need help to find Billie Jean,” she cleared her throat, “and I’m willing to do whatever I need to for you to help me. Please.” She tucked the money back in her pocket and adjusted the glasses on her face.
How in the hell was Billie Jean related to this chick? And to find out she was her twin sister. That was fucking mind-blowing.
Billie Jean had worked at Skinz for two years as a waitress, and never, in a million years, would I have imagined this woman being her sister. Billie Jean was forward and a bit crass. Two things that worked in your favor when you were a waitress at a strip club.
Looking at Raelyn, I had to wonder if she had ever stepped foot in a strip club. She was all soft and innocent looking. The fact she actually had the balls to walk into the clubhouse was pretty fucking astonishing.
“What makes you think Billie Jean is actually missing and not just off on a bender with her latest girlfriend?” I didn’t know a ton about Billie Jean, but I had bailed her out of a pinch at the club a time or two. Drunk guys watching naked chicks they couldn’t touch sometimes made situations where they thought they can lay hands on the waitresses.
“Because I haven’t heard from her since Tuesday night. She called me right before she went to work that night, and since then, I haven’t heard a word from her.”
That really wasn’t that long to me. Hell, Mom and Dad hadn’t heard from me in probably a month. Four days? That was fucking nothing. “I’m sure she’ll turn up.”
Raelyn shook her head. “I know something happened to her, Playboy.”
My name rolling off her tongue sounded foreign. I could tell it was a word she had never spoken out loud before. At least, not before tonight. I folded my arms over my chest. “I don’t get why you’re knocking down my door for help. I’m not anyone’s hero, Raelyn.”
That couldn’t be any closer to the truth. I was here on the Earth for a good time and that was it.
“I don’t know what else to do.” Raelyn paced back and forth and ran her fingers through her hair. “I called all of Billie Jean’s friends and even went to the club to talk to the ones I didn’t have numbers for.”
“Wait, wait,” I interrupted. “You went to Skinz?”
Why did I have an urge to yell at Raelyn for putting herself in risk of getting hurt?
She nodded. “I only went inside for two minutes, though. I left because it was crowded. I just waited ‘til her friends came out, and then, I asked them if they had heard from her.”
Jesus. The parking lot of Skinz was not the type of place Raelyn should have been hanging out. “When were you at the club?”
“Last night. I was hoping to see you there, but then I realized I didn’t know what you looked like so I stuck with trying to talk to her friends.” Raelyn stopped pacing and turned to me. “None of them had seen her since her shift on Tuesday. They all said she seemed fine when she left at two-thirty and then, poof, she’s gone.”
“Why haven’t you gone to the police?” To me, that seemed like the first thing a girl like Raelyn would have done. Hanging out in strip club parking lots and walking into an MC clubhouse seemed a little out of the norm for her.
“Because all I can tell them is, I have a feeling she’s missing, but I have no actual proof that she is. And...adding in the facts that she works at a strip club and she’s been on the wrong side of the law a couple of times even though she always came out with a clean record.”
She could be right about that. Even I had said at first that she was just out on a bender. “Call her.”
Raelyn rolled her eyes but pulled out her phone. “I’ve called her at least a hundred times, Playboy. You think she is going to answer now that you’re here?”
It was a possibility, but that wasn’t why I wanted her to call Billie Jean.
Raelyn swiped a couple of times on her phone and then put it on speaker. It rang seven times, and then, it went to voicemail. Raelyn ended the call and shoved it back in her pocket. “She doesn’t answer.”
“But it rings,” I pointed out. “That means her phone isn’t dead. If she’s been gone for four days, she’s had to have charged her phone at some point.”
“Or someone stole her phone and knows not to answer when I call.”
Again, that was a possibility. “Or she’s out having the time of her life and doesn’t feel like answering her phone.” God knew there were days like that for me.
“She’s not,” Raelyn said through clenched teeth. “Something is wrong, and I need your help.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed, folded my arms over my chest, and looked up at Raelyn. “I don’t know how I’m going to help you.”
“You know people, and you’ve helped Billie Jean before,” she insisted.
“I don’t know what kind of people you think I run with, and I’ve helped her when guys get handsy at the club. Not when she’s fucking missing.”
Raelyn stepped toward me. “Four grand, you get whatever you want from me, and you help me find Billie Jean.”
I was going to let her proposition slide before because I didn’t think she really meant it, but she said it again. Women like Raelyn didn’t know the types of things I liked to do to women. “I don’t think you know just what you’re offering me.”
She took another step toward me. “I’m not some dumb girl, Playboy. Your name alone tells me what you’ll want from me.”
“What happens if I can’t find Billie Jean?” I had no fucking clue where to start looking for her, and I didn’t want to get Raelyn’s hopes up at all. “I know her from the club and have never hung out w
ith her outside of there.”
“Just give me a week. If you don’t figure anything out, I’ll disappear and you’ll never see me again,” she pleaded. She took another step toward me and bumped into my knees. “Please.”
“Raelyn,” I spoke softly. “You’re offering me a lot for maybe not finding your sister at all.”
She stared at me and didn’t speak. Her eyes begged me, and there was no way in hell I was going to tell her no. And, I was a ruthless bastard anyway. Offering herself up to me twice was one more time than necessary. “Tell me everything you know.”
“Does that mean you are going to help me?” she asked, hopeful.
My gaze connected with hers. “One week. I’m not making any promises that I’ll find anything, but I’ll do what I can.” I wasn’t really offering her much. My connections could get me only so far and who was to say that they would know anything about Billie Jean. “You can keep your money, though.”
She tipped her head to the side. “But...” she trailed off.
“Keep your money.” I was far more interested in the other thing she had offered me, except I wasn’t going to take her until she wanted me to. I was a savage, but I wasn’t an asshole. “I’ll collect on the other part of your offer later.”
Her face fell, and I think she expected me to take her right then and there. “Oh, okay.”
I scrubbed my hands down my face and resisted the urge to wipe the frown off her face with a kiss to seal the deal. I held my hand out to her. “Shake on it.”
She looked at my hand. “Shake?”
Yeah, she totally thought I was going to take my part of the deal right then and there. “Yeah, darlin’.”
She wrinkled her nose. “It’s Raelyn.”
I shook my head. “I know. Remember, you told me about five times when we first met.”
She rolled her eyes and put her hand in mine. “I’d like to never be reminded of our first meeting. Can we add that into the deal?”
I gently squeezed her small hand and shook it. “Adding to the deal after we agreed on it?” I chuckled.
She watched our hands clasped together. “It’s a small adjustment.”
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