Dream Keeper (Dream Team 4)

I’m mad at you.

From Aug sometime later, hopefully when he wasn’t driving:

Why?

Because you just left.

And you’re way too good

at practicing restraint.

He had been.

At my house, an end-of-the-night beer for him, glass of wine for me, a little convo, a little snogging on the couch, and then he left.

So yeah.

I was not happy.

About that.

Because I was totally happy since the date had again been amazing, even if the beginning was deep and intense. It was a good deep and intense. And to get to know Auggie, we were going to have to get deep and intense.

Might as well start out with a bang.

Though, it went without saying I was hoping for another kind of bang.

Poor baby.

I am.

I’m a very poor baby.

Because my boyfriend

is mean.

Obviously, I freaked out after sending that because Auggie’s three dots kept going for a really, really, really long time without a text coming through.

And in that long time, I realized we’d had one phone date, one at-my-kitchen-island date and one going-out date that started with him going to a meeting at my daughter’s school.

And I’d just called him my boyfriend.

While his dots were forming, I quickly texted:

I didn’t mean boyfriend-boyfriend.

I was just being funny.

There were not a lot of dots to that, before I got:

Shame. The boyfriend bit was

my favorite part.

Yes!

That was his reply.

Of course, it took off from there and it could not be denied that our fourth date was a text date that lasted from after he left me until we mutually agreed to stop texting in order to pass out and started again this morning with him texting me so early, it was criminal.

But I did not care even a little bit.

And this was what his text said.

Morning, sweetheart.

Call me crazy, but that was the most perfect text I ever got in my life.

Now it was just after 10:00 and we’d been texting on and off since 5:30.

And yes, I broke my own rule and had my phone by my bed all night.

To hell with EMFs.

“Pepper.”

Ian’s voice saying my name, doing it sharply, and in close proximity, had me stopping in my tracks as well as ceasing looking at my phone grinning like a loon.

The reason my name was sharp and close was because he said it right before I ran into him.

“Hey, sorry,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied, and his usually deep, rich voice still had an edge to it.

Ummm…

“I’m glad I caught you,” he continued. “Dominique gave notice yesterday. She’s going back to Milwaukee.”

I said nothing since I already knew Dominique, one of our solo dancers, and a veteran of Smithie’s, was considering this. She’d rekindled a flame from back home. She’d gone back, he’d come to Denver, and now they were done with long distance and were going to give it a real go.

“So we’re hiring and I’d like you, along with Lottie, Hattie and Ryn, to sit in on the auditions.”

Righteous!

That would be a blast.

I grinned at him. “Right on.”

“We’ll actually be hiring two, maybe three dancers. So be prepared. This could take some time.”

I did not grin at that.

Mostly because we didn’t need two, maybe three dancers.

Dominique was fantastic, but we already had a good lineup of soloists.

This was evidenced by the fact that we had a packed house every night with a line around the building to get in.

Ian had done a revamp of the show, taking us from stripping with only Lottie having several marquee performances a night, to being a revue. That included all of us taking the stage for solos, ensemble burlesque performances in between, and with Holly on board doing two to three comedy bits a night and engaging the audience between dancers so the stagehands could set up for the next, we had it down.

The frosting on top was that now they served food. Gourmet tapas that had been a huge hit.

It all had been a huge hit.

The VIP section was booked until March, that big of a hit. And the rules to reserve VIP were, you had to book it for the entire night, you had your own server and could get whatever you wanted from the bar, but menu options were extra.

And it cost fifteen thousand dollars.

A night.

We absolutely needed to replace Dominique, but unless he was letting go of the ensemble performers, or adding to them, we didn’t need more soloists.

And this was a concern to me because I was not Lottie. She not only was an artiste exotic dancer, she was famous. She’d been famous before she started at Smithie’s. She’d been his headliner for years and only increased in popularity in that time.

It was also a concern for me because Hattie was an exceptionally talented dancer, and not just the exotic kind. She was so good out there, her routines so spectacular, she’d organically taken over the headliner spot. (Lottie didn’t mind, because that was the way Lottie was.)