Taking Jana (Paradise South #2) (18 page)

She pursed her lips at him, then allowed her mouth to curl into a coy smile. But then she looked away. Because she couldn’t deny that of all the blushing embarrassment in her cheeks, there was an equal amount of heat flooding her core.

Eyes straight ahead, Jana.
She had no choice but to keep her damn eyes on the road.

CHAPTER 25

H
e’d been driving
her to Johnnie’s studio each night since last Saturday. And he hated it. He hated thinking about Johnnie visiting her, dropping in late at night. Antonio had brought one too many girls there for that bastard over the years. Johnnie had been ‘out of town’ before, but just to leave the club on slower nights so the prick could screw around with hordes of whores at that very Demonte fuck pad.

Damn him. She was nothing like his cheap sluts. She was anything but. Watching Johnnie speak to Jana made him ill. And the thought of him touching her….

But why was it burning him so damn bad? She was a client, an acquaintance. Bordering on a friend. Albeit an attractive friend. Who spoke three languages, including Spanish.
God, such beautiful Spanish
. Intelligent, funny, endlessly
hard-working
, and giving. Jesus, for her family, she seemed to only give.

And tremendously strong. Jana Park was a woman who knew how to handle her shit. It didn’t seem like she’d needed a man’s help in past. So why did he think she needed his help now? In his experience, women like her took offense to a man overstepping. Besides, she’d probably dealt with far worse than Johnnie Demonte.

No.
Not necessarily the case at all.

Most pricks were obvious, true colors flashing like neon signs. Johnnie Demonte was different. Manipulative. But Antonio had to consider, Jana being as smart as he thought she was, that she knew this of Johnnie. Maybe, crazy as it might be, she wanted to be with someone like Johnnie. Maybe she was playing
him
? Yeah. Getting even with all fuckers like him by proxy.

He groaned, sick to his stomach. It almost didn’t matter the reason for her being with him, or rather
potentially
being with him. If she
was
with him, she was too damn good, too pure, to be so. That slimy bastard.

He wished he could know so it would stop eating at him. But who the hell was he kidding? If the answer was ‘yes,’ that she was letting Johnnie—he couldn’t even finish the thought—the confirmation that they were together would be too much torture.

Because what could he do if Johnnie Demonte was using her, manipulating her, playing the shining knight of her goddamn dreams? When in reality he was a sadistic, womanizing pimp. An Ivy League asshole with a BA for his puny fucking cock.

But it wasn’t any of his business. None. Jana was a grown woman; a strong, independent, extraordinary woman who deserved the world––no, the universe. Not
Johnnie-fucking
-Demonte. Least of all Johnnie Demonte.

CHAPTER 26

I
t was Thursday.
She’d see Johnnie tomorrow night, and he’d want to see what progress she’d made. And she felt good about the changes and training at the club; she was even a little excited.

But really, she knew she was just tricking her own mind. This wasn’t her life, her profession, her choice.

In actuality, the days had trudged by, and Jana felt like she was on a rusty old
merry-go
-round, the super hazardous
hand-push
kind on playgrounds from way back. Jana was stuck on one. Frozen, scared, and holding on for dear life in the center of the round steel disk. She was dizzy and only getting dizzier. The metaphoric “playground kids,” the people in her current
day-to
-day, kept on pushing it around and around relentlessly. Harder and harder they’d push, faster and faster she spun; just out of control, out of her mind.

The one exception, though, was when she was in her mobile and temporary piece of paradise with Antonio at the wheel. He’d make her die laughing with his limo stories—she had quickly dropped out of the competition because her ER stories made her miss her real job too much, and her club stories made her hate her current one even more. He’d also tell her about his beloved Vallarta, and his huge family that had dwindled down to just his brother Ray, his sister Isabel, and Celeste and her girls in Jersey. She loved hearing about his siblings and their real, crazy, loving interactions. In general, the details of his life were a sweet distraction, a reprieve from her reality.

Then sometimes he’d remain perfectly silent. Giving her space, room to breathe, time to
be
. She thought it was a little crazy how
in-tune
he was to her needs, all unspoken, but he’d anticipate them just the same. It could’ve been that he was damn good at his job, super
service-oriented
. But, still, it was a little eerie. Not even Luly called her moods as well.

So for the entire week, from the hospital to the club, to the apartment and back again, round and round went the
merry-go
-round. Except when her new friend, her guardian angel, pulled up to take her away, if only for a short time, until the next insanity.

And of course, there were plenty of instances of insanity. She’d gotten not a single call or email update from her precious ER all week, and that drove her to the brink. And she’d made a small payment toward her father’s hospital bill with the advance Johnnie had insisted on giving her, but that teeny drop in the bucket seemed to make the hospital all the more diligent, approaching her mother daily instead of phoning Jana. Now her mother was calling Jana upon each occurrence, gnawing on her ear like a rabid mutt on a bone, but slightly more needy. Oh, then after hours upon hours on the phone with four different credit card companies, Jana now had to wait ’til the following week for her cards’ cash advances to hit her account so she could make a larger dent in the hospital bills. Then the billing people would lay off a bit, right? Unlikely. Round and round she spun.

Then, there were the girls at the club.

*

The dancers were super needy or full of attitude, one extreme or another. But she already knew that.

Today she got to the club a little early. She needed to pick through a pretty pathetic pile of resumes; many more of the existing girls had been weeded out because of the stringent training schedule she’d implemented. She also wanted to give the remaining girls some extra pole work before the Friday night peak, and, yes, to impress Johnnie. And she’d stay until midnight or later like she had every night this week. She needed to get this right. Make changes fast.

And God, the girls hated change. Again, something she already knew. But they wanted their income to change!
She
needed their income to change; she needed the club’s top line to change. Hell, the changes were only subtle tweaks to bring the atmosphere up: music choice, some costume guidelines, and of course, more elaborate pole work. But really, how much
class
could she possibly infuse into a club named The Wet Spot? In
Newark-flippin
’-New Jersey.

Anyway, it turned out to be a really good thing Johnnie was gone for the week. Even though she had gotten a virtual
carte blanche
from him with how she handled the training, the girls seeing that she didn’t have to consult the owner with each of her desired changes made her authority that much more real.

The other reason; there was definitely less complexity with him out of town now that she was staying at his apartment. There was no gray area staring her in the face. No mixed messages and no opportunity for an awkward situation. That is, until he came back from Long Island.

Get back to work, Jana.
She sighed as she looked down at the
never-ending
pile overtaking the small round
two-top
. Filtering through the
half-completed
applications and amateurish headshots, all with
sugary-sweet
vanity email addresses to match their chosen stage names, was downright depressing. And
guilt-surging
. She hated the idea of meeting these faces, these names, these hopeless souls. And worse, the thought of hiring them, roping them into the life. It felt too wrong.

No choice in it, though. She’d have to call down the list.

Or she could ask the existing girls to ask their friends.

Like Amber had wrangled her nearly a decade ago.

Shit, she hated this.

She looked up to give her eyes a rest from the pile, and from the situation. The place was dead, none of the girls were out on stage yet, but the bar had a few hardcore early birds already. She sighed, wanting to be anywhere else when she heard her name. Or rather, her stage name.

“Winter! God, is that you? Still givin’ me the chills too. Damn,” a man’s voice came from behind her.

She put on a plastic grin and turned around in her seat. It was one of her very first regulars, a young attorney who had a really long last name and a really short first name, neither of which she could remember now. But she knew he helped pay for a hell of a lot of her parents’ first debt and was one of the more respectful guys she’d ever danced for in her past life.

“Hey, wow. It’s been years! How are you?” She couldn’t cover for her lack of memory. She’d worked too hard to forget it all, as a matter of fact.

“It’s Joe. Joe Papatheopoulos!”

“Of course, Joe!” He had aged over the years, deep etchings around the eyes, worry lines across his forehead, a dusting of gray at his sideburns. But he had the same kind eyes. If any regular had to recognize her, at least, it was one of the few benign ones.

“Wow! You look exactly the same, drop dead gorgeous. Amazing!”

“Thanks, Joe. Really good to see you,” she said, her face starting to hurt from her
too-large
-
for-life
smile.

He waved to Erin, the bartender, for another drink. “And one for my old friend Winter here.” He patted the stool next to him, signaling for her to join him.

“Oh, Joe, sorry. Nothing for me. I have to get back to my paperwork and then get the girls together—”

“Paperwork instead of pole work, huh? Moving up to management…good for you.”

She wasn’t going to explain. Not worth her breath. “Thanks, Joe. Yeah, taking on more responsibility these days.”

He pulled out a card from his shirt pocket and came over to her. “Look, I don’t believe in coincidences. You were legendary. Guys in my firm still talk about you. Take my card. Call me anytime you need any legal advice, whatever. For you or any of the girls,” he said, then he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Employer stuff, domestic situations, even real estate and bankruptcy, we can help. And for you, Winter Snow, totally pro bono. After all, you made our entire damn decade!” He ended his monolog but continued to stare at her, as if musing over
long-passed
memories in his apparently inebriated head.

“God, thanks, Joe. Really,” she said, relaxing her smile into a more genuine one. His offer was really nice. “And hey, enjoy your night, okay? The girls are training really hard on the pole, learning lots of new moves. See if you notice a difference, yeah?”

“Absolutely!” He winked and raised the glass Erin had set down for him. “Absolutely will do.”

She held up the business card, nodded another thank you, and showed him that she was sliding it right into her purse.

She turned back in her chair to the pile of resumes and sighed.

*

“Hey, Laynie!” she called, spotting the girl heading back to the dressing room.

Laynie was Jana’s favorite dancer, hands down. She was spunky and had a real talent for performing. Knew how to work the crowd. Jana thought she could go far,
outside-the
-
club-scene
far. And she was sure that no one had ever told Laynie that before. When she had given the beautiful young brunette the audition flyer she’d grabbed from the library, Laynie had lit up.

And it made Jana feel something other than numb. Maybe she could really make a difference to Laynie and to the other girls too? Get them trained, bolster them with confidence, teach them to work the system, save their money instead of shooting it into their veins or snorting it up their noses, and then get out and above this seedy, shitty
no-type
-
of-life
.

“Can you get all the girls together for me, sweetheart?”

Laynie nodded with a smile, snapped her thong at the hip with a wink, and headed to the back dressing room to do as she was asked.

It was an hour before the usual weekday crowd rolled in. They’d gotten used to coming in early, and the groans had even lessened. Because the alternative was
bank-breaking
. Jana wouldn’t let them dance if they showed up even a minute late for training, which was only enforceable now, on the slower weekday nights. It was tomorrow and Saturday night that Jana had to worry about, with the drastic dip in dancers.
Shit.

She sighed. Then stood up from her seat as the stage began to fill. “Afternoon, ladies. So, before we start”—she sighed again, then swallowed, feeling suddenly parched—“need to know if any of you have friends you think would want to come and—” But she halted her words there. What the hell was she doing? Recruiting more babies? Her gut twisted. Yes, her friend Amber had given her a path to solve her
fucked-up
family’s money problems back in high school, and now she was back again for more, but most girls who got into the business weren’t as directed, focused, as she was. Most washed straight down the drain.

“Sorry, never mind. Let’s just stretch out, then get some pole work done.” No, she’d work with the girls she had, and with the resumes…and if girls came in seeking a spot…but that’s where it ended. The weekends hadn’t been that slammed anyway, so said Laynie. They’d be fine. Except that if she’d been training them hard and right, they might get a big influx by word of mouth alone.

“Stretching, Winter? Really?” piped Sugar, rolling her
crystal-green
eyes without shame.

“Yes, Sugar…you’ve got to actually stretch and warm up before each shift. You wanna get hurt? Then what?” She was shocked. There was no forethought at all. “Listen, ladies. You have to be healthy and toned to do this kind of work,” she went on, pointing to the pole. “To be great at it, to make the best money, you’ve got to physically train. You can all make astounding money here. There’s more than enough green amongst these assholes,” she pointed to the sea of empty
stage-side
seats, “to go around. But you’ve got to work for it. Be a cut above, and with how the other clubs in the area run things, it’s not hard to do. It does mean eating healthy, working out, little to no alcohol, and no snow, no needles. None of it. Actually, starting now, today, if the
no-drug
rule up to this point went unenforced, it’s being enforced now. If we even find any drugs on your person, you’re out. And I don’t care if you’re the best of the best, even if you have a following. It doesn’t matter. Any drugs, you’re done. Everyone got it?”

She took the nods and mumbling as her answer.

And then she left them all there for several minutes.

She returned with a pile of papers.

“Take one and pass ’em. You can’t dance here if you don’t sign it. It reiterates what I said. No drugs. And there will be more rules to come. Don’t like it, dance somewhere else.”

Amidst the scoffing and whispers, she went up to the pole. She reached up, her muscles flexed and shifted as she maneuvered the pole with ease as she pulled herself into an Iron X. Laynie and a few others applauded as Jana’s body maintained its perpendicular position to the pole, hovering in a parallel display of pure strength over the
scuffed-up
stage. Then her feet landed back on the stage floor. The whispers had stopped. She saw only wide eyes and gaping mouths. Even Sugar was silent.

“I made three times the money the other girls made in my time. The difference? I kept clean, and I kept focused. When I see you tomorrow before shift, I want everyone to be prepared to tell me their goals, I mean, their
life
goals.”

“I can tell you
my
life goals now!” Sugar announced. “Feeding my baby daddy and our six
mini-mouths
. Got no other priorities but that right now,” she said with her
ultra-attitude
stance, hip and chin jutting for emphasis.

Jana’s hand swept wide, presenting the mostly empty club and its neon red accented darkness. “
This
can give
you
a whole lot more than the basics. Believe me. So if you’re gonna be here putting it out there for these fuckers, I wanna show you how to really put it out there, and then bankroll a future for yourselves so that you don’t have to put it out there a minute longer than necessary.”

Sugar swiveled her gorgeous head of
mile-high
curls and spun around. The other girls either nodded or stared blankly.