“Like Jesus?” I tease, lifting an eyebrow. But curiosity makes me walk over to the server station to ask, “What’s that?”
He smirks, like he knew I’d have to ask. “Your price. But we can call it a gift to help you change your mind about coming out from behind that bar.”
My mouth drops open at his audacity. “What kind of gift do you think would possibly make me agree to . . . ?”
The rest of my words fall away when he pulls the item out of the large brown bag.
CHAPTER 5
GRIFF
I have her. I know I’ve won as soon as Red trails off, and her expression goes from “No way” to “Holy shit!”
I’ll admit, I had my doubts before. Returning to the Reapers' table with nothing but a bottle of Glendaver to show for my trip was an ego blow, for shit sure. Everybody but Waylon laughed as soon as I arrived. And Waylon doesn’t count. He never laughs or smiles.
“Even Hades,” Hyena repeated. This time with a smug singsong. Like I was Icarus or something, and he was the dad that warned me not to fly too close to the sun.
I ignored them all and pulled out my phone.
“Whatcha doing?” Crazytown, one of the old-timers in the club, asked. “Calling that little secretary of yours to drop off all the money you owe us?”
Yeah, the bet had gotten out of hand.
Red did a hell of a branding job on herself before I came along. The other Reapers were so sure I’d get shut down, they'd all anted up, and everybody but Waylon had wagered big against me—to the point that the pool grew to five figures in size.
I didn’t care about the money. I was probably going to piss that out in blow and booze by the time the two-week holiday in Latham County with the Reapers was done and I returned to Nashville for the Stone River Records New Year’s Eve show.
But my pride refused to go down without a fight. I only got in five minutes of game with her before she officially shut me down. But I felt that five minutes, and I knew she did too. Something was crackling between us—something that made me want to fuck her even more for reasons that went beyond the bet.
“Assistant. Nobody calls them secretaries anymore except for old fucks like you,” I answered Crazytown. “And yeah, I’m texting her. But not for the reason you think. I got a plan.”
“What kind of plan?” Hyena asked. “You know what, man, never mind. Ain’t no plan in Tennessee going to open up those legs without you telling her who you are. How about we double down on the bet?”
Damn Hyena. He acts like a fun-times guy with nothing on his mind except the next laugh. But ask any of the people we send Vengeance to collect on—all fun and games disappear when there’s money on the line.
His sly eyes shone like a Wall Street banker when he asked, “You game to go or too scared to raise the stakes?”
I went back and forth with myself—the ego my mom gave me warring with the good Latham sense that my dad and half-brother were always telling me I had to start using. There were no guarantees my idea would work, after all.
But in the end, my ego won out. Not to mention the raging hard-on I had gotten from just talking to her.
“How about we triple it?” I asked, glaring back at Hyena like Clint Eastwood in the eighties.
But unfortunately for me, that fucker, Hyena, agreed without even a millisecond of hesitation.
And all he had to do was say, “Even Hades” a few times to get the rest of the gang on board.
Even Waylon joined in this time.
He just shrugged when I gave him my “What the fuck, et tu, Brute?” look. “She ain’t happening for you tonight. Might as well learn you that the hard way.”
So yeah, I’d been real close to doubting myself when I walked up to the bar.
But now I have her.
Her entire face lights up with shock when she lays her pretty brown eyes on the item I took out of the bag—a first edition vinyl copy of Roxxy Roxx’s first album.
This wasn’t one of those items her fans could get easily.
When Roxxy Roxx signed the deal for her first few albums, it had been under one of those horrible hit-job contracts that her original label, Majesty Records, used to be known for—the kind of deal that made artists like Prince write the word SLAVE across his face. And fortunately for me, it had been around that time in the early 2000s when vinyl had fallen out of favor. So there'd only been one pressing of her original albums before she parted ways with Majesty Records. And for various reasons, Majesty hadn't bothered to do a second pressing after they went down in a dumpster fire flame of embezzlement and lawsuits.