Taking the Score (3 page)

Chapter Three

The muddy red stain on the carpet compelled Brody’s focus. A whiskey spill? Dried blood? Some other weird fluid his imagination refused to shape? And Flynn thought this place was classy. If this was wha
t the VIP lounge looked like, Brody shuddered to think what the other areas of the club had to offer. Just one more nod to the tired nature of this entire enterprise: the girls, the decor, the utility of strip clubs in general. Not to get overly philosophical, but was this really supposed to represent the evolution of a capitalist market? Women selling a flash of T & A to drooling apes? He didn’t get it at all, and yet here he was doing his part for the adult entertainment economy.

God bless America.

“You look like you could do with a bit of fun, Brody,” Smythe-Osborne said for what had to be the forty-seventh time tonight. He clinked his glass of Macallan eighteen-year against Brody’s and raised it t
o his lips. Fifty bucks on the tab right there. Rather than think about how much this client outing was going to cost him, Brody’s gaze attached to the woman doing a zombie corpse dance around a pole that would probably give you an STD if you touched it.

A petri pole.

Christ. How in the hell had this happened?

One minute, Emma was serving oolio or whatever that fancy tea was called in his office as Brody tried to nail Smythe-“call me Nigel, mate”-Osborne on a timeline for the Crown Point development bid. Next, he was bar-crawling through Rush Street, introducing S-O to the seedy underbelly of Chicago nightlife, and had finally ended up in a strip club. But not just any strip club. The one Flynn had recommended.

Brody had opened up his wallet to pay for the client’s $200 steak dinner and found the card along with a brand-new condom. Cherry flavored. Flynn’s sleight of hand was a thing of beauty. Brody had no idea how the asshole managed to get hold of his wallet whenever he damn well pleased. Guy could give Penn & Teller a run for their money.

All night, through each bar he’d hit with S-O, the card had taunted him.
Club Girl—Where Fantasies Become Reality
. Not especially imaginative, as he doubted anything remotely in the same zip code as fantasy occurred here. Even calling it a “strip club” was wishful. The restrictive Illinois laws prohibited full nudity in the presence of alcohol—or alcohol in the presence of nipples. Whatever, it meant that he was about to get pretty damn drunk, reamed of great wads of cash, and would be lucky if a nipple made an appearance. The girls on stage were wearing those weird pasties that looked like Band-Aids along with boy shorts that weren’t nearly revealing enough.

They also looked miserable. No way in hell was Brody getting a listless lap dance from one of these women.

“So what do you say, Brody?” S-O said, his tongue practically flopping all over the stage. “Lappy for two?”

“All you, Nigel. Think I’ll sit this one out.”

Nigel laughed, a braying donkey sound that stepped on Brody’s last nerve. “Sit this one out. Cracking, mate. Absolutely cracking.” A slight turn of his head was enough to make a skimpily dressed woman materialize.

“You want dance?” Blond and fit, she had an Eastern European accent and the downtrodden look of a woman who grew up on a farm and probably thought mucking out the pig trough would be a more tantalizing prospect. Brody was with her on this.

“Sure, love,” Nigel said. “Lay it on me.”

“You like private room? Can do all nude. And touch.” She ran her hands down her hips, previewing what Nigel could do if he was willing to pony up the green. Likely Brody’s green.

“Let’s start out here and see how the night goes. Got a bird for my friend?”

“Yes. I get friend.” Following her gaze to the bar, Brody found a number of women lined up like a horseflesh market in Lubbock. “You choose?”

He shook his head and laughed off the offer. “I’m just here for immoral support.”

But his eyes were already straying back to the lineup because something—someone—had caught his eye.

A pair of stellar toned legs that traveled miles and joined a perfectly heart-shaped ass peeking out of shiny red shorts. She wore one of those tops that tied around her neck, also red, that had him dreaming of unknotting the bow and peeling it down. Dark waves of lush hair around her shoulders and touchable porcelain skin completed the fantasy. And she had…hot damn, a tattoo. He couldn’t quite make it out, but it was something vibrant and animalistic along her spine, snaking into the border of her shorts, trailing a path his hand itched to follow. He had still only seen her from the back, but if her breasts were anywhere near as perfect as the rest of her, sign him up.

The rest of the Club Girl harem stood face front, displaying their wares, but this hot little number refused to follow suit. A nonconformist stripper. He liked that.

Was he drunk enough to do this? Just a little harmless fun. See if his dick worked around a half-naked bad girl instead of the fully clothed good girl back at his office. Get his mind off Ms. Strickland for a few minutes.

“I want her,” he said to the blonde. “Lady in red.”

…

As soon as Ray had demanded she up the payments on Daisy’s debt by upping the sex quotient, Emma had balked. Give lap dances to the sweaty, leering assholes who wouldn’t know a “touching on hips only” rule if it slapped
them with a flogger?
N
to the
O
. But when Ray made it clear with a look that Daisy might not make it ’til dawn with her face unscarred, she had reassessed her options—and made a plan.

Emma wasn’t a complete ogre, but no way could she compete with the other dancers. They were fake-tanned with legs up to their fake-lashed eyeballs and surgically enhanced where it counted. In the opposing corner, there was Emma. So pale it would take a week in the sun to go from blue to white, her petite-sized jeans usually in need of further hemming, and most definitely all natural in the boob department. Which would have been awesome if there was anything to cup. Granted, she wasn’t pancaking it, but she wasn’t giving those grasping eyes much to work with, either.

There was an excellent chance she could survive this night without anyone requesting her as-yet-untested lap dance services. Piece of cake.

But as the night wore on and Emma shrank closer to the bar, trying to become one with the wood—and not the woodies of the clientele—she was struck by two conclusions: no one had asked her for a lap dance. Mission accomplished. But as she was no longer serving tables, she was earning no tips and her debt to Ray plunged deeper and deeper.

Not such a great plan after all.

Close to one in the morning and a new wave of clients had stumbled in, raucous, drunk, possibly desperate enough to overlook her obvious shortcomings in the exotic dancer department. If one of them asked for a little gyrating, dry-humping action, then she would close her eyes, hold her breath, and think of the double chocolate cupcakes she couldn’t afford.

“You ready to work?” Katarina leaned in where Emma stood at the bar. “I have customer for you.”

“Someone picked me?” She shuddered to think what kind of man would choose her when the full complement of Club Girl was available for their dirty dancing needs. Some freak who liked ’em pasty.

“Yes. Lap dance in VIP section.”

Oh, God, the only thing worse than a lap dance in front of a crowd of handsy customers was a close-to-private lap dance in the roped-off VIP lounge. Technically the clients weren’t supposed to touch beyond a light grip of the dancer’s hips, but everyone knew that it didn’t stop there. And those guys could always afford the private rooms, so if it went well—
double shudder
—then it could escalate quickly. In the privacy of the seedy rooms, a dancer was expected to strip and make it worth the premium fee. A hundred and fifty dollars before tip for a private show lasting ten minutes.

More than the going rate for a high-priced street hooker.

But it would go some way to making a dent in that debt. All she had to do was take off the sparkly halter lent to her by Katerina. Maybe her hot pants…

No, no,
no
. She couldn’t do this. She would think of another way. Anything.

“What’s the problem?” Ray barked behind her. “I have two clients waiting for a show in the VIP lounge.”

Katarina laid an encouraging yet firm hand on Emma’s arm. “No problem, boss. We go now.”

Ray’s eyes ate Emma up. “Must say, you dirty up real good, Emma…” If she weren’t so worried about her sister, Ray’s mustache-twirling would have made her laugh. “Keep an eye on her,” he added to Katarina.

As he turned his back, Katerina stuck her tongue out. “Prick,” she muttered.

Tucking her hand under Emma’s elbow, Katerina led her away. Emma’s wobbly, borrowed heels pinched her little toe something awful, and with each step forward, that pinch reminded her that she was about to cross into uncharted territory.

She halted before they reached the VIP lounge, separated from the rest of the club by a three-step stairway. “Kat, I don’t think I can do this.” Panic pitched her voice in a squeak she could barely hear above the boom-boom bass of the club’s music. “I’m not what this guy wants. I can’t dance, I can’t be…sexy.” Maybe in a previous life, the one she’d tried to leave behind, but not like this. Not with a metaphorical gun to her head.

“You will be fine. Just watch how I do and you get big tip. Maybe $50?”

Every penny of which would go into Ray’s grubby little hands. Acid coated her stomach, rising in a torrent to her throat. There was no way she could pull this off. Yet she resumed her march toward the VIP lounge. Just three little steps.

Bad stripper walking.

“What if he touches me?” What if he doesn’t?

Katarina stopped, one heel on the bottom step. “You moan like his hand belong to David Hasselhoff.” At Emma’s dropped jaw, she shrugged. “We have different fantasies in Romania.” On gravity-defying heels she bounced up the stairway like a gazelle, dragging an ungraceful Emma with her. “Hello, boys. Are you ready to play?”

Emma raised her eyes and clashed gazes with Broderick Kane III.

Fuck. My. Life.

Chapter Four

For the slimmest, teetering-on-the-edge moment, Emma held her breath.

Waiting.

Praying.

That he wouldn’t recognize her. That he was wasted or clueless or completely unobservant. Side by side, Emma’s disparate identit
ies couldn’t be less similar. The sheer ridiculousness of this situation might be her way out.

Why she looks a little like my…nah, couldn’t be. Let’s party hearty!

If only.

Mr. Kane ran a hand through his dark hair, adjusted his glasses farther up his nose, and with a flickered glance, appeared to question the drink in his hand. The man who barely looked at her in the office focused his full attention on her now. Silver-gray eyes darkened in…appreciation?
No, dummy.
Recognition. The hope Emma had clung to for the longest beat of her life slunk out the door with an
adios, suck-ah
and a flip of the bird.

Fire scalded her cheeks as his grip on the tumbler of scotch in his hand tightened.

Busted.

Yes, it’s me, your PA, now your stripper for the evening. How do you do?

Surely this was a nightmare, and she’d wake up any second now. As if it wasn’t bad enough that she was working here, forced to shake her ass for nameless slobs, now she was faced with the prospect of giving her boss a lap dance. And he was with—
oh God
—Mr. Smythe-Osborne, who was gifting his chosen stripper Katerina a royally lascivious leer.

Thankfully, Score Property’s potentially lucrative client had followed the script and didn’t appear to recognize Emma.
(Take a leaf, boss man!)
Mr. Smythe-Osborne rubbed his hands together, perhaps warming them for all that silky Romanian flesh he longed to touch.

“I bring sexy friend,” Katerina said with her usual solemnity. “This is”—she looked at Emma, and a twisted smile touched her lips—“Chardonnay.”

Chardonnay?
Not cool, Kat.

With a quick headshake, Mr. Kane planted his feet and went to stand. “Ms.—”

Emma placed a hand on his shoulder and arrested his progress before he could push her name past those grim lips. Hard muscles flexed beneath her fingertips, the solidity of his body registering on some deep primal level.

“Hey, handsome. Let’s not stand on formality. Just call me Chardonnay.”

Just call me Chardonnay?
Was she out of her freakin’ gourd?

His eyes narrowed, hopefully in understanding. She braved a peek over his shoulder to the bar where Ray was watching, knowing that somehow it was better all-around that her prior acquaintance with this particular client did not become common knowledge.

“I can get someone else,” she said to him. Pleaded. The club’s lights, scents, aura of desperation pressed in on her. “I’m clearly not what you expected.”

Under-fucking-statement of the century.

A new song started up, something with a thumping bass beat—shocker—that segued into an ode to grinding.

“Yeah, baby,” Mr. Smythe-Osborne said, channeling Austin Powers. “Let’s get this party started.”

Katerina began her dance, a sultry, undulating wave that managed to say
fuck me
and
fuck you
simultaneously. Impressive. For a moment, Mr. Kane and Emma stared at her, curiously drawn to her weird magnetism. It had the added benefit of giving them both a moment to breathe and figure out what should happen next.

Mr. S-O beckoned Katerina. “Come here, love.” She sat on his lap, continuing her dance in the sitting position as he laid hands on her hips. On one of her arch backs to show off her pert breasts, she caught Emma’s eye and gave an unsubtle jerk in Brody’s direction.

“She dance for you. She good dancer.” Pronouncement made, Katerina returned to Nigel, who was licking his lips as he stared at her barely-cupped breasts.

Another surreptitious glance confirmed Ray was watching like a hawk. Emma locked gazes with Mr. Kane again, and…nothing. No clues in those silver-gray eyes. No indication of how this mess should be resolved. He seemed to be waiting. For her to start dancing?

No, not that. He was waiting for an explanation. For why his unflappable, trustworthy, by all accounts nice-girl personal assistant moonlighted as a stripper. She would give it to him, but not now. Not with Ray’s soulless shark’s eyes on her. Not with Daisy in danger.

The things I do for you, sister bitch.

The music changed to
Bang Bang
by Ariana Grande. Emma liked this song. It had a good beat and the lyrics spoke to her…
body like an hourglass…booty like a Cadillac
. Not especially applicable, but maybe she could channel it.

She gave a tentative sway. Mr. Kane inched back.

Not quite a recoil, but not exactly good for her self-esteem, either. He held Emma’s gaze with steel-gray eyes of—ah, there it was, at last. Disapproval. Cartoon wavy lines of condemnation radiated off him.

Bang, bang into the room…I know you want it.

She swayed with more purpose, knowing Ray watched, knowing if she didn’t do this and make it look good, she would bring on a universe of hurt for her sister. She rolled her hips from side to side and shifted her gaze from Ray to Mr. Kane.

Brody.
She couldn’t continue to think of him as her boss. He was Brody, the man she’d had inappropriate fantasies about. Yay, dreams do come true.
Not.
It was one thing to use your boss as masturbation fodder but this was definitely crossing a line. Heat rose to her cheeks at the thought, but there was no time to worry about that. If she thought sexy, perhaps she could
be
sexy.

She took a few steps forward, a couple back, trying to magically conjure a rhythm. A roll of her shoulders felt vaguely like she was poppin’ and lockin’. Did people still do that? She decided that maybe people did
not
still do that, so she changed up to kicking her toes forward and twisting her wrists at the same time.

Going for broke.

…

Brody had entered the wardrobe and was now sledding in fucking Narnia.

Ms. Strickland was a stripper.

He silently repeated the sentence, reconfigured the elements like he would a tricky word jumble, and eliminated the chaff:
Ms.
Strickland. STRIPPER.

Nope. Still made no sense.

Ho
w had it come to this? He paid her well. Very well. She was worth it, ten times better than any assistant he had previously employed. Of course he was attracted to her—though fuck knew why, given how she made no effort to showcase what were clearly amazing assets. But she had this cute-sexy way of biting the end of a pencil when she was taking notes. And pushing an errant dark curl that had escaped from her scraped-back bun. That move, so innocently erotic, always sent blood pumping to his dick.

But he would never act on it. She was Ms. Strickland, the kind of girl who curled up with a cup of cocoa and her cat in the evening and watched
Downton Abbey
. In moderation, he would’ve bet. Emma wouldn’t binge-watch anything. She had far too much self-control.

But…this was no longer Ms. Strickland. It wasn’t even Emma. Meet
Chardonnay
, the stripper to make a man’s dreams come true. At least for however long this damn song lasted.

Over the thud of his heart and the permutations of his brain, Brody watched the scene playing out before him. Ms. Strickland was known for her perfect handling of any and every situation. She could juggle multiple phone calls simultaneously, whip up elaborate spreadsheets that had the analyst in him weeping with joy, and produce oolong tea out of thin air. But she had finally met her match in a dingy strip club on Chicago’s North Side.

The woman could not dance.

Every jerk of her body made Brody wince to witness it. Weird kicks of her hips and thrusts of her pelvis should not have been sexy—they really weren’t—yet his groin was on serious notice. No one in his right mind would find this appealing in the slightest, but then Brody had not been in his right mind for a while.

He smoothed the hair that had flopped over his glasses while a cavalcade of emotions tripped through his brain. Confusion was the top note, but there was also shock, amazement, and a touch of anger. Lower on the list, but making a steady charge, was lust.

A small part of him—okay, a steadily growing part of him—enjoyed the vindication. Dowdy Emma had edged under his skin, invading his sexual fantasies when she had no goddamn right to be there, looking as she usually did in those bad suits and sensible shoes. But obviously his subconscious libido knew better. It knew that Ms. Strickland hid a hot bod underneath the polyester. The cock he wouldn’t normally trust as long as it took him to get off actually had the inside track.

Trust the cock, Kane.

That was a conclusion he’d enjoy later because right now the decent part of him, the part not enslaved to his cock, needed to figure out why his assistant was dancing half naked—and badly—in a strip club.

Her eyes flitted nervously over his head toward the bar, then back at him, imploring him to play along. He wanted to turn but he suspected that would be bad for her. She was in some sort of shitty situation. No one would
choose
this, would they?

She had to be here under duress. Goddammit, that was all the more reason to put an end to this charade. Drag her out of here in the safety of his arms.

But his hesitation spelled trouble. His lack of reaction to her incredibly suspect moves as he analyzed the situation had clearly forced her into an assessment of her own. And the outcome of this assessment? Try a new move to get the client’s attention, which involved her pivoting less than gracefully and… Holy fuck,
backing up
. Truck-reverse beeps screamed in his head. He held his hands up to put a halt to this crazy, only to have her back right up into his palms.

His hands were on her ass.

Her amazing ass.

She froze. As did he. The surly blonde joined the still-as-a-statue party, which had the effect of making Nigel, the fourth in their happy quadfecta, question what had happened.

“Love, what the hell—?” A snaggletoothed grin broke wide. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a meaty handful there, mate.”

Sure did. Still, no one seemed capable of turning this shit-ton of awkward into a slightly less shit-ton of awkward. If only she would—yes, move, no,
grind
her ass on his open palms. She started rolling her ass in circles against his hands.

Her ass. His hands.

This could not go on, yet he found himself unable to pull away, his palms magnetized to those wicked curves. She continued that slow, weirdly erotic move.

Ms. Strickland had found her party trick.

Mesmerized, he let his grasping gaze travel over the reveal of skin above her shorts. Seeing the tattoo up close, he realized he’d been mistaken. It wasn’t an animal, but a squadron of dragonflies, beautifully etched on her creamy skin. He licked his lips, the urge to drag her back and place his mouth against the ladder of her spine spiking his pulse. Hands full with her perfect ass, he wanted to explore and ravish the body of his assistant.

Remembering who she was yanked him back to reality. He shifted his hands to her hips and twisted her around with a rougher-than-intended jerk.

“C’mere,” he growled, the verbal command complementing perfectly the seeking fingers that dug into her hip bones. Amazingly, she obeyed.

Note remembered:
Ms. Strickland likes it when you growl.

She straddled him, her hands resting on his shoulders, her kissable lips parted in surprise. Time to get to the bottom of this. Without roaming his hands all over her “bottom” as S-O might say.

“Chardonnay,” he murmured, not quite believing that anyone would choose to be called that.

She blinked. Apparently, she’d already forgotten her stripper name, and his heart cheered at the notion that perhaps this wasn’t her normal.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” she hissed.

He had a half-naked woman seated about two inches from his very stiff cock, and the woman happened to be his employee. It might not be what it looked like, but it sure as hell looked like something.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he whispered in the ear farthest from Nigel and Emma’s stripper friend.

Her response? Grind on him some more. Because turning him on unbearably was the answer.

“I have to do this.”

Which? The grinding? The stripping?

“My boss is watching.”

“Your boss?” he asked, incredulity straining his tone because he had assumed she had one boss.
Him.

She looked more than a touch exasperated at his narrow reading of the situation. “I have to”—she dragged her body up his thighs, snugging in closer against the cock fighting to rip free from his pants—“I have to make it look good.”

In looking good, it happened to feel amazing. His hands cupped her lush ass, barely covered in those shiny shorts. She sucked in a breath.

“Hips only. That’s the rule.”

“You backed your ass into my hands!”

She moved his hands to her hips, a prim move that reminded him of Ms. Strickland.
His fucking assistant.
“I was trying to get your attention.”

“Believe me, you had it, Chardonnay.”

“Oh, shut up. I didn’t pick that name.”

“It suits you,” he said, trying to see the humor in this situation. Laughing tended to kill the mood real quick, but he doubted there were enough jokes in the world to diminish his monster erection.

“You’re a terrible dancer,” he added, laying it on thick. “In fact, I’d pay you to stop.”

“And you’re an awful client. You’re supposed to be ogling and leering.”

Is this what happened to her every night? Did some ape—did multiple apes—ogle her? Paw at her luscious curves, tell her to move closer, grind harder, get wet for them? Anger the likes of which he had never experienced racked his body to near-paralysis. She lifted her ass from his lap and arched back so her perfect breasts jutted forward.