Rough and Tumble (12 page)

In fact, she wouldn't mind a few of those. . . .

“Sounds fine with me,” she simply said.

“Good. Afterward, I can hook up with Jimmy Beetles at the R and T in your friend's place. I'm sure
you
don't want to go out there again since it's so . . . What did you say last night? Ah,
meretricious
.”

He was a fast learner. Too fast.

“See you in two hours, then,” she said, her blood already fizzing.

“And Molly?”

“Yes?”

“Tell your friend to cool off the gambling. Vegas isn't an Xbox game or a night out with the boys stacking chips and smoking cigars.”

“I hear you. I have no idea what she's thinking. She's got a far leveler head back home.”

Dead air. Then he said, “Does she?”

After another pause, he said good-bye and hung up, and she stayed in that seat for a minute, absorbing this twist of events: Cash giving advice about Arden. Cash coming to the rescue.

Strangest of all, she was about to continue her adventure with the most unexpected knight in tarnished armor she'd ever met.

***

When the black Thunderbird pulled up to the drop-off area in front of Caesars, Molly had company with her.

Even through the windshield, she could see the what-the-hell? arch of Cash's eyebrow, and she raised her hand in an innocent wave.

He rolled down the passenger side window, grinning.
Touché
,
it seemed to say.
Are you planning on bringing your friends this time for backup?

Molly didn't have the chance to confirm or deny, because Arden had already bounded to the window.

“Cash, I owe you my life!”

Sofia joined her, tugging down on the hem of her white cotton dress as she bent to the window. “I knew you were a good guy.”

Right. This from a girl who'd wondered out loud if Molly was getting into something just as dicey as Arden had gotten into with Beetles.

Wasn't it clear that Molly had everything under control on her end?

Of course she did. She had things
so
under control that, while she'd been waiting for Cash to arrive, she'd relaxed in the room, calling the accounting firm contact that her former coworker had given her yesterday for a casual phone interview. She'd used her computer to e-mail her résumé to them last evening, and they had been impressed enough for her to score an in-person interview Monday, six days away.

After that, she'd taken a long time to brush her hair, even looking in the mirror at the chunk of missing hair at the back of her neck. It wasn't horrendously obvious that she'd given a whole lock away, but it'd bear some explaining if the girls saw it.

Yes, everything was totally under control.

She cleared her throat, and Cash's new fan club backed away from the car. As he got out of it, coming around to open the door for her, she shot the girls a triumphant look.

I even have
him
under control today
. She'd never known it before, but when guys wanted sex, it was easy to dispense favors, one by one. Now,
that
was fun.

“Hope you two finally make it to the pool,” she said to the girls, climbing inside, where the flow of air-conditioning met her.

Cash shut the door and came back around. Arden beamed at him, but Sofia lost her smile and watched him carefully. Then she glanced at Molly.

In spite of her kind words to him, she was still on alert.

Pepper spray
, she mouthed to Molly, pointing at her own purse.

Molly gave her a thumbs-up, letting her know that she was armed and ready if needed. She also had breath mints and body splash, though, so . . . yeah. Armed and ready.

Cash gunned the engine, and the girls waved good-bye like Molly was their precious. She rolled up the window, buckling in, then leaned her head back against the seat rest. Her gaze sought the dashboard, where he'd kept her lock of hair last night. It was gone.

What had he done with it?

Instead of asking, she said, “You really are going the extra mile for us. We appreciate it.”

“I had ulterior motives.”

Her libido flared. Just as she'd thought—it hadn't been a one-time thing yesterday. Heck,
she
still burned for
him
inside and out, his heated magnetism making her want to slide on over and snuggle against him, rubbing her cheek over his muscled arm.

Purr.
“You really are taking me somewhere to eat, right?” she asked.

“We need to discuss terms about Jimmy Beetles. Besides, I wouldn't promise a woman food then snatch it away from her. That's just rude.”

“Smart man. I didn't eat a lot this morning—I suppose it had something to do with my friend putting herself at the mercy of a biker.” She crossed one leg over the other, toward him. Her flowered sundress draped her thighs, flirting with them. She kept her hand on her over-the-shoulder purse, where the eight hundred dollars she and her friends had come up with waited. Big whoop.

Cash wasn't smiling now. “I meant what I said about Arden. Has she always had a gambling problem?”

Molly blinked. “She doesn't have a
problem. . . .”

“I told you last night that I saw something in her at the poker table. What she has is more than a phase.”

Molly didn't say anything, mostly because she couldn't believe that a stranger would know Arden better than she did. She and Sofia had ripped into Arden back in the room, and Arden had apologized with such sincerity that Molly was sure she'd never be this careless again. She'd only had too much to drink at the Rough & Tumble—and she'd let her Arden-sized mouth get away from her while making bets she couldn't cover.

But Cash had some points, and Molly would be talking to Sofia privately soon about how to make certain Arden kept her promises.

Cash's phone rang from somewhere in the backseat, but he didn't seem concerned about it. He let it go to voice mail, running his free hand over his scruff, the brushing sound making her squirm.

“Want me to get that?” she asked.

“Nah. Whoever it is can wait.” He grinned at her, as if he'd made all the time in the world for this lunch. “So what kind of food do you like?”

“Anything, really. Well, I do eat a lot of vegetables and rabbity food. That's what Sofia always calls it.”

“Sounds very prim and proper. You ever eat meat?”

Wow.
He made it sound so dirty.

Molly tried not to laugh. “When I'm hungry enough.”

As his smile grew, he headed north on the Strip, past Slots o' Fun and the massive clown marquee for Circus Circus. The Stratosphere's tower loomed on the left, its daredevil thrill rides dangling from the top.

As he slowed by the casino's entrance, Molly automatically said, “No.”

“I don't recall asking you a question.” His green eyes flashed with mirth.

“If you're thinking of putting me on something like that roller coaster before or after we eat, then no. I have boundaries.”

His smile asked her just how movable those boundaries were. Based on last night, she'd say “very.” But she still wasn't going on any death coaster.

To her relief, he drove on until he turned off the Strip, toward a block of buildings that had all of a sudden become rather run-down.

Her stomach knotted up. “You're doing it again, aren't you.”

“Doing what?”

“Taking me out of my element. Is that your . . . thing? Seeing how I'll react in places I don't belong?”

Then it occurred to her—she was more than a lunch date to him. She was a toy. Wind her up and watch her go.

“Hey, Molly,” he said while pulling into the parking lot of a pink adobe building with cactus and a busty neon cowgirl winking at them near a doorway. “Don't overthink this. You wanted good food and I'm about to give you some in exchange for . . .”

“The pleasure of my company?”

“That.”

As he shut the car down, she raised her gaze to the marquee sign near the road.

Pink Ladies Gentlemen's Club
.

He had to be kidding.

Before he opened his door, his phone rang again. He got out, fetched his cell from the backseat, glanced at it, then peered at the Pink Ladies. After closing the car up and stuffing the phone in his pocket, he traveled to her side. The whoosh of air had been enough for her to smell wood smoke and barbecue on the hot breeze.

She didn't move when he opened her door. “I have a feeling,” she said, “you
love
to watch me step over boundaries.”

“It does do something to me, seeing a snow queen put in a hot situation.” He held out his hand. “But why don't you just trust me now?”

That was an excellent question. She trusted Cash with saving her friend because he was getting Jimmy Beetles off Arden's back. But, much more basically, did Molly trust Cash to be a gentleman right here and now?

No, because she had the feeling he was only testing her, getting off on seeing her shed her skin.

“Are any of your friends in there?” she asked.

“Probably.”

“How many of them did you tell about last night? I want to know before I go anyplace with you.”

He sobered, lowering his hand. He'd bragged to everyone, hadn't he?

But when he raised his hand to her again, inviting her to cross one more boundary with him, her heart started that taboo, runaway beat she was starting to get so used to.

“Come on, Molly,” he said. “Trust me.”

Something plunged from Cash's chest down to his gut as Molly stared at his hand, indecisive.

He did have to admit that a warped part of him had brought her to the Pink Ladies, and it hadn't only been for lunch. Yeah, this place served amazing Tex-Mex, thanks to the owner, a war vet from Laredo, Texas. Jesse Navarro was a regular at the Rough & Tumble, and he—not so much the lunch menu—had more to do with the reason Cash had hauled Molly out here.

He was still parading her around in front of the people who were the closest thing he had to friends. But it was also true that he'd wanted to push her limits, like she'd said. This had become a sick fascination for him, putting the good girl in a bad place and wanting to see how she would take it.

A streak of cruelty
, he thought. A lot of people had told him he had one of those ever since . . . well, years ago, when he'd first hit the road and never gone back to Reno, a place he'd rather forget, populated by people he'd rather forget. Molly was only his latest diversion, like the three women he'd fucked the night before last. He'd wanted to see if they'd say no when he'd suggested a foursome, and they'd been game.

It was always the same: how far could he push before a woman told him to screw off?

What would it take for Molly to do it before he got tired of her and had to be the one to do the leaving?

Yesterday, before she'd come into the Rough & Tumble, he had no doubt she would've turned tail and run from just the sight of a strip joint. But Cash had the feeling that he was a real bad influence on her, and the realization gave his ego a kick. It also did something else to him that he wouldn't pin a name on. It was easier not to have to think about it.

“So, what do you say?” he asked in his most persuasive voice as he kept holding his hand out to her. “Are you in or are you out?”

She glanced at the Pink Ladies again, a stacked shoe box of a building with black mirrored silhouettes of buxom dancers serving as some classy decoration near the roofline.

Then she laughed. That's right—
laughed
.

“Now I know you're playing a joke on me,” she said, leaning her legs to the side in the car seat, her dainty gold sandals planted on the carpet. “No one in their right mind would bring me here. In fact, I might be offended if anyone was serious about it.”

Was she going to tell him to get lost now? “You can be offended after you taste the carne asada. It's the best around these parts.”

“Oh, so this is actually a Vegas gourmet experience I'll thank you for. I'm sure places like Le Cirque and Nobu on the Strip have nothing on the Pink Ladies.”

“See,” he said, lowering his hand, taking on a disappointed tone, even if he liked that she was giving him shit, “I didn't think you were like the rest. Would you rather go back to your overpriced cocktails, buffets, and guidebooks . . . ?”

She got a little prissy at the reminder of the clone speech he'd given her at the saloon yesterday when they'd met. “I'm not a clone.”

“If the gears fit . . .”

He'd done it now. She narrowed her eyes at him.

Molly's button, found and pushed.

He ran a slow hand over his hair, ruffling it as he peered around the parking lot, like he had a million better things to do than sit here and wheedle her inside. “Idiot me, thinking you might enjoy getting off the beaten path, just like when we drove off the road in the car last night. . . .”

She cleared her throat, smoothing down her conservative, flower-shadowed sundress, which came to just above her knees. Fidgeting—Molly's big poker tell.

Lazily, he rested his back against his car. Even through his shirt, he could feel the heat from the sun on steel. “You're doing it again.”

She stopped playing with her dress, folding her hands in her lap.

Sometime he was going to ask her what this tell was about. Maybe even later today, if he could get her back to letting her hair down, doing and saying anything he asked her to do or say.

The door to the Pink Ladies opened, spilling out a Def Leppard song and two businessmen with their jackets off and ties loosened. Their appearance was a lucky break, too, because Molly relaxed against her seat, like she was thinking that if professionals frequented this establishment, it couldn't be very terrible.

Thank you for doing the rest of my work for me
, he silently thought to the men.

She swung her legs out of the car, and he extended his hand again. With a flicker of her eyelashes, she inspected him, finally accepting his offer.

He pulled her to her feet, and wasting no time, she distanced herself from him, tidying her dress and waiting for him to close her passenger door.

Prissy, all right. He barely recognized the wildcat from last night. Then again, from what he could see as a slight desert wind blew her dress against her body, he recognized a whole lot of her: curvy but slim hips, a trim waist, that gorgeous ass.

She walked ahead of him to the Pink Ladies entrance, and he got the impression that if she was going to jump into this stripper joint experience, she was going to do it with both feet.

Another button pushed for Molly?

As they arrived at the door, the two businessmen paused while walking to their Porsche, ogling her. One nodded to the other in a look-at-that-piece way, but Cash let it go, even though it made his hackles rise. It also made him proud to have a woman like her with him.

He opened the door, music slapping the air. “After you,” he said.

Molly's don't-mind-if-I-do smile almost matched his, and his blood strained through him, clouding thick and hot.

Inside, she hesitated and looked around, and he tried to see everything through her eyes: darkness that was lit only by the long main stage that jutted into the audience, plus a couple smaller platforms, all with dancers cozying up to the poles while dressed in see-through nighties and sex-kitten pumps. A smattering of blitzed men at separate tables, except for one where a few truckers leered at the main stage in a group. Mirrors on the walls, making everything a slow-grind fun house.

And what did Molly do? Well, she sure as hell didn't wheel around like she had back at the R&T when she'd seem Jimmy Beetles getting a hand job on the patio. Not even close. She forged straight ahead, toward a table in the corner, near a buffet.

She seated herself, all proper and ladylike, her back to the main stage. But after Cash went to his chair, too, she seemed to think twice, angling herself so that she had a view of the sugar-me-sweet festivities.

Shit, she looked like she was at a polo tournament, with the way she was sitting up so straight, one leg crossed over the other, her hands clasped on a knee.

Cash took in the show—and not the one on the stage, either. This whole situation had obviously become the Watch Molly Try to Shove Everything Back in Cash's Face Hour, and he merely fished in his back pocket for his cigarettes and lighter. When his fingers brushed Molly's cut lock of hair, which he'd tied together with a small rubber band after going to his house-sitting home last night, he nearly put that on the table, too, just to see her face.

But he'd save that one for later, instead tossing his lighter and smokes to a spot near a standing plastic drink menu before he sat.

She glanced at the Bettie Page lighter and the pack, then took the smokes and stuffed them in her purse, just as the song ended. As he stared at her, she applauded the dancers while they made their way offstage in nothing but G-strings.

The music toned down as more girls, dressed in skimpy costumes and looking for lap dances, trickled from a back room and onto the floor.

“You gonna give those back any time soon?” he asked Molly, gesturing toward her purse.

“Smoking dulls the palate,” she said. “Why would you do that to the fine food we're here to enjoy?”

She said it so sarcastically that she eviscerated all his lines about bringing her here for the cuisine.

Fair enough. He leaned back in his chair, gesturing to one of two waitresses who was making the rounds. She'd know what he was here for, seeing as he ate a lot of lunches at the Pink Ladies when he was around these parts.

In the meantime, Molly added, “Furthermore, let's not kid ourselves about having a Jimmy Beetles strategy meeting. I'm here because it's funny to see me in the midst of all this decadence. You want to witness how I react to another woman's tits and ass.”

“Damn, Molly, those words came out of your mouth like you say them often.” Two could be sarcastic.

She lifted her chin. “I always say
tits
and
ass
. It's not as if I don't have them.”

“I can vouch for that.”

Giving him a long, chiding look that he almost thought might be a little amused, too, she smiled at Janelle, their pink-catsuited waitress, as she brought them water.

Janelle and her Halloween-long fake eyelashes smiled back at Molly. Then their server turned to Cash.

“What's swinging, hot stuff?”

“Hey, Jan.” He nodded at Molly. “We're having the special.”

“Aren't you always?” Janelle said, looking him up and down before she left.

Cash hid his mouth by rubbing the stubble over the lower half of his face, but Molly caught his smile anyway.

“Is that another reason I'm here?” she asked. “To show me all the girls you've slept with on
this
side of the county?”

“That reason actually didn't occur to me.”

And it was true. But he scanned her for any sign of jealousy anyway because . . . yeah, he'd admit it—he'd like to see some in her. It was another turn-on he couldn't deny.

Maybe there was some jealousy to Molly in the way she rolled her eyes, like she was above his games. His groin tightened. If he was fortunate, jealousy would be another of her buttons and, before the end of the afternoon, she would give into him again because of it, then he could finally get her out of his system.

At the next table, one of the businessmen from the parking lot plopped into a seat, his tie fully undone now. He gave Molly the eye, not that she noticed.

Cash sure as hell did, though.

But he didn't say a word, because a dancer named Tammy had already hip-and-chested her way over to their table.

Once again, Molly smiled politely at her while taking in the woman's long red wig and lavender headband, the sheer purple minidress that showed her black bra and panties underneath, and the lime-green scarf around her neck.

“Hey, you two,” Tammy said, leaning down to brace her hands on the table. He knew her well.
Really
well. “I'm Daphne. Want a dance?”

Molly clapped her hands once in utter delight.

Huh?

“
Scooby-Doo!
” she said to Tammy/Daphne. “What a great costume!”

“Bingo!” Tammy/Daphne stood back up, adjusting her scarf and preening. “Not many people get the reference until I tell them or until Velma joins me for a twofer.” She turned around, waving to another dancer—one Cash had never seen in here before.

While “Velma,” with a ripped orange sweater, red pleated skirt that went up to
there
, kneesocks, Mary Janes, glasses, and a brown bobbed wig ventured over, Tammy/Daphne squinted at Cash, trying to identify him.

“Wait. Cash? Is that you?” she asked.

“Forgot your contacts again?” he asked.

“I was late dropping the kids off to school.” Tammy/Daphne giggled and came over to sit on his lap, wriggling against him. She would've done it in spite of any “date” he brought here, and most days, he wouldn't have minded, but he was extra-aware of Molly sitting across from him
today
, giving him a blank look.

Didn't she give a shit?

Obviously not, because she started asking Velma about where she'd gotten her costume.

“Made it myself,” the girl said. “I'm new around here, and I didn't have a ‘hook' until Tammy . . . I mean,
Daphne
came up with this idea.”

“So cute,” Molly said. “I'll bet the guys love it.”

Tammy/Daphne was tickling Cash's cheek now. “The costumes are brill. It's the kind of hook that'll take us to the night shift if Jesse ever lets us get on it.”

Cash lightly grasped her wrist. “Where is old Jess?” The man had called him earlier, along with Gideon, and Cash hadn't checked his voice mail yet to see what they wanted. He'd figured he would see Jesse soon anyway.

Velma jarred a thumb toward the back of the house. “He's prowling the kitchen, supervising the cooks like this is some big-deal restaurant. Want me to go get him?”

Before Cash could say yeah, Velma was off.

Tammy/Daphne shook her head. “She hasn't learned the ropes yet. College kid, moonlighting before night classes. Doesn't know when to put the customer first or to keep her mouth shut about Jesse and his true-love kitchen.” She pouted at Cash. “But
you
know that I know how to please.”

Now Molly's smile wasn't so polite. He was sure it was because of some girl-code thing, where it wasn't cool for Tammy to be hitting on another woman's date, even in a strip club, where that was kind of the point.

A devilish idea took hold of Cash, and he patted Tammy/Daphne's ass, smacking her off his lap. He pulled out a few high bills from his money clip and slid them toward her.

She beamed. Molly didn't. And when he nodded toward Molly, she sat up even straighter in her chair, like she already knew what he had in mind.

“How about we let Molly have the full Scooby experience?” he asked. “There's extra in it for you if you give her a ride in the Mystery Machine.”

Across the table, Molly caught his challenging gaze.
I dare you
, he thought.

She gave him the same look that she always did when he called her a clone.

Tammy/Daphne must've sensed the tightrope tension wavering between her clients because she kept gauging both of them before talking to Molly. “Is this your first woman-on-woman experience, sweetie?”