Joseph wrapped a hand around his margarita. “Can I ask where you went?”
“Tokyo.” That stunned him. Get ready, Joseph, here comes the mother of all surprises. “I went with the guy from that night at the club. He lives there.”
He froze.
“Crazy, huh?” I continued.
Slowly Joseph returned to life. “You’re certainly not predictable. So, you’re back. Are you and him–?”
I inhaled deeply and blew it out. “I don’t know what we are.”
Since arriving in the States, I hadn’t heard from Dominic until this morning. I didn’t sleep well without him. I lay in bed, stared at the sunrise and wondered what he was doing on the other side of the earth. I was still so angry, but fuck it. I pulled my phone off the charger.
Today was the first day I felt a little better. I told myself it was because I’d completely recovered from the jet lag, but it was bullshit. It was from opening the door to Dominic, just a tiny bit.
Now I stared at Joseph and began to wonder about his motivations. “Why did you want to get together? To see if I’d come back to work?”
His eyebrows lifted in what seemed to be curiosity. “Would you?”
“No.”
“And if Mr. Red wanted to work out an arrangement, would you be interested in that?”
My heart beat faster with anxiety. I hadn’t thought about Mr. Red at all, and doing so now only made my disdain for him more intense. “What kind of arrangement?”
“One that would make you exclusive to him. He wants you bad. As in, he’d pay for everything, bad. Car. Apartment. He’s loaded up to his eyeballs.”
“He wants me to be his on-call whore.” I shuddered. “I don’t care how much money he has, or how broke I’m about to be, a thousand times no.”
Surely Joseph would make some percentage or land a fee if he could broker this arrangement, but he didn’t look disappointed about my outright rejection. Instead his lips curled back in a bright smile.
“Then, I’d like to offer you a job.”
Had he gotten stupid in the past two months? “I told you, I’m not going back to the club.”
His smile was devious. “But what if it was to take over for me?”
chapter
TWENTY-SEVEN
My glass slipped from my fingers and thumped loudly on the table. “What? Where are you going?”
“I have some personal stuff to take care of. I need some time off.”
My brain raced with thoughts but my voice went skeptical. “You want me to fill in for you?”
“You and I both know you can do it. Next to me, you’re the one who knows the most about the club, and I trust you. It’s not like what I do is all that hard. The place practically runs itself, but you’ve seen me handle the sticky situations.”
Me running the club. The thought gave me a rush of power. And the money . . . “How much would I pull down?”
He laughed. “Probably more than you made in the room. Are you interested?”
“Fuck yeah, I’m interested.” I was way more than just interested.
He detailed it all out then. I’d train and shadow him this weekend, and next weekend I would take over as manager. I spent the rest of the day at the club with him, learning how the monitor system worked and the cash-out process. It was weird to be back at the club, and I forced myself not to think about how I left.
A daily morning routine began to develop with my texts to Dominic.