I brushed it off. “They recognize me, that’s all.”
“No, they want to fuck you,” she said, leaning back with a sexy smile on her lips. “And apparently, they don’t care if you’re having dinner with another woman or not. Who knows, the more the merrier if they can get you into bed with them, I suppose.”
Her forthrightness was a turn-on. I was hard as fuck now.
“Tell me, what do you do when you’re not yelling at bikers and ramming their vehicles with your car?” I asked, changing the subject.
Her cheeks flushed. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. You’re passionate, I like it.”
She toyed with the stem of her wine glass. “I was angry that first day we met because I’d just lost my job.”
She told me how her boss had tried billing her for a custom paint job to his Camaro. He accused her of scratching it when she was taking out the trash. She said she was nowhere near his car. He said he had CCTV footage of it, but when she demanded to see it, whaddya know, he didn’t have it.
When she told me she’d been working at Slingers, a seedy strip club just out of town, it made sense. The owner, a greasy cretin called Willy Breeze, was as slimy as they came.
“He fired you because of that?” I asked, taking another drink of wine.
“No, he fired me because I kneed him in the groin when he said I could pay off my debt by bouncing on his balls three afternoons a week.”
My wine almost came out of my nose.
“Sounds fair enough,” I said, putting the glass down on the table.
“Which one, his offer, or the ball busting?”
“Definitely the ball busting.” This woman had fire, and it was getting me more and more turned on by it. “There’s plenty of women in this town who’d line up to shake your hand.”
“Yeah, well, it felt good at the time. But I’m not so sure it was a good decision. Despite being a cesspit of broken dreams, with way too much DNA sticking to the floor, it was still a good job. Doing the lunchtime shift meant I finished in time to pick up Noah from school, and there were less cockroaches who came out to frequent the establishment in the daylight.”
I’d been to Slingers once, purely for business, and didn’t touch a thing while I was there. Even the glass our drinks came in looked suspect.
“And you haven’t had any luck finding a new one?”
“Not yet.” She shrugged.
“And you’re not completely opposed to slinging beers to drunken, crude men who use words that’d make your mama cry?”
Her eyebrow went up. “Why, do you have somewhere in mind?”
“As a matter of fact, darlin’, I do. One of our bar girls is moving out of town. The job is yours, if you want it.”
She suddenly straightened in her chair. “You’re giving me a job?”
“Sounds like you need one.”
If her last smile seduced my dick, then the next one slayed me. She was so damn beautiful, and I couldn’t help but fuck her ten different ways till next Sunday in my head.
“You’re kidding! I mean, are you sure?”
“I assure you, darlin’, I rarely joke about business, and I never make an offer I can’t back up. If you’re interested, come by the clubhouse on Monday at 12:30 and I’ll introduce you to our bar manager, Randy.”
She sat back, and her dark eyes twinkled with mischief. “And here I thought I’d end this day getting laid. Not with a job.”
Part of me fell in love with her, right then and there.
“Why not both?” I suggested, a smile playing on my lips.
She shook her head. “I’ve mixed business with pleasure before,” she said. “It doesn’t work.”
“Sounds like you have a story.”
She shrugged and toyed with the stem of her wine glass. “Not much of a story. I drank too much at an after-work party and went home with one of the male strippers from the club I used to work at. He read more into it than there was, and when it became obvious I wasn’t interested in a repeat performance, he became a petulant child. He was difficult and intolerable. He tried picking arguments with me. Started complaining to others about me. When our boss caught wind of it, he hauled us into his office and told us to sort our shit out. Slick said either I left, or he did. He was a big draw on Ladies’ Night, so I suddenly found myself with less and less shifts.”
“I can’t imagine you taking that lying down.”
“You’re right, I didn’t. I was ready to take it further. But Noah was about to start school, and working nights was going to interfere with our time together. So instead of wasting my energy fighting for a job that wasn’t worth it anymore, I moved on. Lesson learned.”