A Million Dirty Secrets (2 page)

“Two-way mirror,” Dez explained. “Each client who comes in has a write-up on every girl on the auction block tonight. Then they’re herded in here like cattle and put on display for the high rollers. It gives them an opportunity to check out the goods so they can decide which desperate girl they might want to bid on.”

“Gee, thanks, Dez. That doesn’t make me feel bad at all.”

“Oh, hush. You know I don’t mean it like that,” she said, trying to make me feel better. “You’re way too good for this sort of thing, and you know it. You’re not
them
.” She motioned toward the other women in the hall. “But I get it. You’re doing it for Faye, and that has to be the most selfless thing I’ve ever heard of.”

Those other women could very well have had their own Faye at home, I thought as I averted my gaze so as not to make eye contact.

We reached the end of the hall, and Dez knocked on the door. A voice yelled for us to come in, but when Dez backed out of the way and motioned toward the entrance, I panicked. Full-on hyperventilation was only moments away, I just knew it.

“Hey, look at me.” Dez forced me to face her. “You don’t have to go in there. We can turn around right now and walk out of here.”

“No, we can’t,” I said, tremors racking my body no matter how hard I tried to steady my nerves.

“I can’t go in there with you. You’re on your own from here on out,” she said, unable to completely hide her regret and worry.

I nodded my understanding and ducked my head so she wouldn’t see the tears welling up in my eyes.

Dez abruptly hugged me to her chest and practically squeezed the air from my lungs. “You can do this. Hell, maybe you’ll actually get some good sex out of it. You never know. Don Juan might be on the other side of that mirror waiting to sweep you off your feet.”

“Ha! Not likely,” I scoffed, and managed to smile a little before backing out of her safe embrace. “I’ll be okay. You just make sure the jerk that ends up with me follows through on our deal. If he doesn’t, I expect you to send the FBI in here with guns a-blazin’.”

“Girl, you already know it. And you know the digits, so you better call me with status reports or I’m coming after you. I have to get back to the bar now, before I lose my job and the inside scoop on you. But remember that I sort of like you and shit.” Dez wasn’t one for the mush, but I knew that was code for
I love you
. She kissed my cheek and said, “Give ’em hell, babe,” before swatting me on the ass and turning to walk away. She wasn’t fooling me. I saw the way her shoulders curled in and she dabbed at her eyes with her fingertips when she thought I couldn’t see her.

“I sort of like you, too,” I said under my breath because she was already out of earshot.

I turned toward the door, psyching myself up before I lost my nerve and backed out. One thought of my mother, and I knew there was no turning back. So I opened the door and marched into that office to finalize the terms of my contract.

Scott’s office looked like something I might have expected for a Mafia kingpin. Plush carpet covered the floor, a beautiful chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling, lighted glass cases held various things I assumed cost a fortune, and fine art lined the walls. Classical music wafted from invisible speakers in an attempt to lure me into a false sense of security. The music and elegant décor lent the illusion of a refined establishment, which may have made the clientele feel more at home,
but I knew better. You could put a suit and tie on a pig, but it didn’t change the fact that it was still a pig.

Scott was at his desk with a cigarette in one hand and a lowball of whiskey in the other. His feet were propped on the desk while he lounged back in his chair, his fingers directing an invisible orchestra like he hadn’t a care in the world.

He turned to look at me and grinned before sitting upright and butting his cigarette in a marble ashtray. “Ah, Ms. Talbot. I wondered if you’d grace us with an appearance tonight.”

Squaring my shoulders and setting my chin, I looked him in the eye. This was my deal, and I was in control until the money was exchanged. I wasn’t about to let Scott Christopher think he was anything other than the middleman he was. “I said I’d be here, and so I am.”

He stood and walked toward me, not even trying to hide the fact that he was checking me out from head to toe. “That’s a very good thing. I might have had to send out a search-and-rescue team to track you down if you hadn’t shown up. You’re going to make me a lot of money tonight.”

“Can we please just confirm the terms of my contract?” I said with a sigh. I didn’t trust him, and with good reason. He sold humans for a profit without an ounce of remorse. How could I trust anyone who did that for a living? If I’d had any other alternative, I certainly wouldn’t have been standing there at that moment.

“Right,” he said, going back to his desk and opening a manila folder with my name written in bold black letters across the top. “I can personally guarantee that the clientele for this evening will have no issue with discretion. In fact, it’s a prerequisite
for all who visit my establishment. They’re the big ballers, the elite league of gentlemen … a real no-nonsense sort with more money than they know what to do with. Their reasons for being interested in the type of merchandise that I deal in are their own, and I don’t pry as long as they’re paying.”

The only solace I took in agreeing to this, other than the fact that I’d be saving my mother’s life, was that I knew someone with enough pull could guarantee the payout required to make sure my mom got the surgery she needed and keep his mouth shut about it in the process. No one with that much money wanted the world to know about his involvement in such an operation. And I most certainly didn’t want my parents to find out about it. That knowledge alone would be enough to send them to their graves, thereby totally negating what I was trying to do for them.

The other perk, or at least I hoped so, was that anyone who could afford to do this would also be refined enough not to make my life a total living hell. I wasn’t naïve; I knew there were some twisted people out there with some sick fetishes, but I held out hope nonetheless.

“I assume you’re still cool with my twenty percent cut?” he asked, shuffling the papers.

“Nice try. We agreed on ten percent,” I said, not one bit amused by his attempt to hustle me.

“Right, right. Ten percent. That’s what I meant.” He gave me a wink that made my skin crawl, then he pushed the contract across the desk and handed me a pen. “Just sign here … and here.”

I scrawled my messy signature above the lines he indicated,
fully aware that I was signing away the next two years of my life. It was a small price to pay.

Shortly afterward, I was ushered into another room where I was told to strip down and put on the skimpiest bikini that I’d ever seen. It really left nothing at all to the imagination, which I gathered was probably the point. The men wanted to see the merchandise before they paid top dollar. I got that, but it didn’t make me feel any less exposed and vulnerable. From there, a hair and makeup stylist did her thing, making me look simply elegant and, surprisingly, not trashy.

After that, Scott secured lucky number sixty-nine to my stomach. I kept my head held high as I joined the other women in front of the two-way mirror. The worst part was that while God only knew who or what was on the other side of the mirror looking at me, I couldn’t see them. What I could see, though, was myself. I wasn’t conceited by any means, but I had to admit that I looked good compared to the other women.

I had never considered myself drop-dead gorgeous, but I was good-looking. My blond hair was long and thick. My eyes weren’t anything special, a dull blue, but once upon a time they had been full of life. That was before my mother’s illness had taken a turn for the worse. I wasn’t perfect in the body department, but I wasn’t too fat or too skinny, and I had curves in what I always imagined were the right places. All in all, a good showing, I hoped.

One by one, the women were pulled out of the room. At first, I thought it meant they were being chosen over me, and I felt like the fat kid in gym class who was always the last one
to be picked. But then they called my number and I made my way toward the same black door I had seen the others before me disappear through. Once I stepped inside, I was led to the center of the room. All around me there were smaller areas with glass walls. Each room was furnished with one dimly lit table lamp, a telephone, and a cushy red velvet chair. It was obvious that the only thing the occupants of the rooms had in common with each other was money—and lots of it.

The first room was occupied by a sheik with dark sunglasses, a long white headdress, and a business suit. Two of the women who had been in the hallway with me earlier were on either side of him, showering him with kisses while rubbing his crotch and chest. I averted my eyes in embarrassment, only to be faced with a man in another room.

This guy was huge, like big-as-a-house huge. He reminded me a lot of Jabba the Hutt. A picture of Princess Leia chained next to him flashed across my mind, and a shiver ran down my spine. I had never been one to imagine myself as Princess Leia as a child, and I most certainly wasn’t going to start now.

In the room next to him was a tiny guy with two huge bodyguards standing next to him. Their hands were crossed in front of them, and I imagined that was probably the closest they had ever come to being relaxed. The little guy had his legs crossed all dainty-like and was sipping on some fruity sort of drink with an umbrella sticking out of it. His white jacket hung casually over his shoulders like he was just too cool to actually put it on. I guessed the male variety was more his type. I couldn’t imagine he’d be that threatening. He was probably there to score some pretty young thing to keep up pretenses in
the public eye while secretly sneaking someone in the back door, if you get my drift.

I looked toward the last room and sighed inwardly when I saw that the light was out. Apparently whoever had been in there had already made his selection and left, which didn’t give me much hope about the remaining assortment.

And then a small orange light flickered from the darkened room like the ember on the end of a recently puffed cigarette. I looked closer and could faintly make out the lines of a body sitting casually in the chair. The figure leaned forward a bit to readjust his position, granting me a better look at him, but not enough to be able to make anything out.

“Gentlemen,” Scott said with a clap of his hands as he came to stand behind me. “This is the lovely Delaine Talbot, item number sixty-nine on our list tonight. I believe you have all of her specs, but allow me to highlight some of her finer attributes.

“First and foremost, she has come to us of her own accord. Obviously, she’s spectacular to look at, which can make life infinitely easier for those of you who require a partner to attend social functions. She’s young, but not too young, so your friends and family will find it more believable that you have a traditional type of relationship, if that sort of thing is important to you. She’s educated and well-mannered, has all her teeth, and is in good health. And there’s no drug problem to be bothered with, which means no detox period to hold you back from what you really want to do with her … and to her.

“And probably the most valuable asset of all is that her innocence is still completely intact. This, my fine gentlemen, is a
grade A virgin. Unsullied, untouched … pure as the fresh-fallen snow. Perfect to train, no? With that said, let’s start the bidding at one million dollars, and may the luckiest bastard win,” he finished with a huge fake smile. He turned to wink at me and then stepped off to the side.

The platform that I stood on in the middle of the room began to move, and although it wasn’t exactly on warp speed, it still caught me unawares, and I stumbled a little before I regained my balance. Around and around I went while the bidding process began. There were no audible sounds of voices, just the occasional buzz as the lights over the doors illuminated. I could see the men pick up the telephone beside them and speak into the receiver before their light lit up, so I assumed that was their method of placing bids.

I had no idea how high the bids were going. I just hoped that it ended with enough to pay for Faye’s surgery. After a while, the sheik and the tiny guy dropped out, leaving Jabba the Hutt and Mystery Man to battle it out. Sure, I had no idea what Mystery Man looked like, but he had to be better than drowning in a pool of Jabba the Hutt.

The bidding between the two of them began to slow down, and I was becoming increasingly dizzy from spinning around on the platform. In truth, I just wanted it to be over with so that I would know my fate and could get on with it. I was still secretly rooting for the mysterious stranger.

Jabba the Hutt’s light was the last to flash, and I knew the bid was back to Mystery Man, but he wasn’t answering. I started to panic when Scott came back into the room and stood next to me. He smiled at Jabba and then cast a questioning brow in
Mystery Man’s direction. I knew it was obvious by the look in my eyes that I was pleading with him, and I had no clue whatsoever if it made a bit of difference to him one way or the other, but I had to try.

The seconds ticked by agonizingly. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, and I felt light-headed and dizzy. I knew that I was going to pass out at any moment if I didn’t get some oxygen to my brain, but I was holding my breath, praying that Mystery Man would come through for me and that I wouldn’t regret willing him to be the winner.

“It looks like we have a win—” Scott started, but abruptly stopped when the light above Mystery Man’s room lit up and the buzzer sounded.

I sucked in a much-needed breath, feeling my brain tingle with the life-giving sensation. My head shot toward Jabba the Hutt. I sighed in relief when he shook his head and waved his hand dismissively in the air before struggling to push out of his chair to extinguish the light on the table.

“You have a new owner, Miss Talbot,” Scott cooed, a little too close to my ear. “Why don’t you walk on over and meet your master?”