The Lights of Tenth Street (23 page)

By the time the meeting broke up, Ronnie just wanted to go to bed. Tiffany approached but walked straight past her, chattering with another dancer about a party.

Annoyed, Ronnie hopped off her bar stool. “Hey, wait up.”

Tiffany turned, surprised. “Oh, hey, Ronnie, I thought you’d left already.”

“How could I, silly? You’re my ride.”

“Oh … yeah.” Tiffany glanced at the dancer beside her. “We’re heading over to Nick’s party. You want to come?”

“No way. I really need to get some sleep.”

“Well … can you get another ride back to the apartment? I really want to go to Nick’s.”

Ronnie sighed. “I think everyone I know well enough to ask for a ride left while I was waiting for you to finish your meeting. Can you drop me off and then go?”

Tiffany hesitated, then looked up. “Look, Ronnie, if I drop you off, it’ll be at least forty-five minutes before I get there, and it’s late already. Most of the others are already there. I don’t want to miss a good party just because you’re too uptight to go.”

Ronnie pressed her lips together. “Is that the way everyone thinks of me?”

“Well … yeah. I mean—
I
know you’re not, but all you ever do is work. You need to come out with us.”

“I’m not uptight, Tiffany. I’m tired.”

She waited for her friend to speak, but Tiffany just looked at the door.

“I guess I’ll just have to get a cab, then.”

“That’s probably best.” There was a long pause, and then Tiffany looked back up at her friend. “I don’t want to do that to you, but honestly … I’m getting a little tired of being your limousine.”

Ronnie sighed. “I guess I can see that.”

“You really need to get a car, girl. You’ve
got
to have saved up enough in a month for a down payment.”

“I guess.”
There goes my college deposit
. “It’s just that I don’t know
anything
—”

“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself!” a boisterous voice broke in.

The bouncer who had thrown Tiffany over his shoulder stopped beside the two girls. He was digging at his teeth with a toothpick and smacking his lips. He grinned sideways at her. “From what I can see, you’re not, like, a total idiot. Maybe a half idiot—or a quarter idiot.”

Ronnie rolled her eyes and tried unsuccessfully to keep a straight face. “Brian, you jerk, that’s not what I was saying. I was trying to say that I don’t know anything about cars.” She shoved Tiffany sideways, breaking their tension. “And now I have to go out and buy one just because my
friend
here simply refuses to cart me around like royalty wherever my little heart desires.”

“Well, I’ll help you,” Brian said.

“Yeah, right.” Ronnie tried to shove him, too. It was like trying to move a wall.

“I’m serious.”

“Sure you are.” When he didn’t respond, she looked up at his face. “
Are
you serious?”

“Sure.” Brian tossed the toothpick into a nearby trash can. “I have all morning and afternoon off tomorrow. Why don’t we drive around and look for a new vehicle for you. I didn’t have anything else planned.”

Ronnie took a deep breath. “You know what, Brian? You’re really sweet. I think I’ll take you up on that.”

Tiffany grabbed his arm. “Since you weren’t going to the party, would you maybe take Ronnie home?”

“Tiffany! I don’t want to inconvenience—”

“Boy, you really are uptight, aren’t you?” Brian clapped a hand against Ronnie’s back, steering her toward the door. “Just accept the help, for Pete’s sake!”

Ronnie allowed herself to be ushered through the front door and toward Brian’s Lexus. She saw Tiffany, laughing, wave good-bye as she climbed into her convertible.

Ronnie rode in silence as Brian made one correct turn after another. After a minute, she spoke up, her voice casual. “I guess you know your way to Tiff—uh, Sasha’s apartment.”

“I helped her move in.”

They approached the security gates, and Brian punched in the access code. Ronnie’s eyebrows rose, but she kept her mouth shut. When Brian pulled up in front of her darkened building, she gave him an awkward smile.

“Thanks so much.”

“No problem. How about I pick you up at ten tomorrow? It’s sort of early, but when you’re comparison-shopping it’s best to get an early start.”

“That’d be great.” Ronnie climbed out of the car. Before she shut the door, she said, “I—well, I want to thank you for driving me home. But, listen, don’t feel like you have to help with the car.”

Brian held up a hand and shook his head at her. “You need to stop selling yourself short, Ronnie. You’re a nice girl. Let me be a friend, okay?”

Ronnie nodded, warmth rising in her cheeks.

“So, like I was saying, I’ll see you here at ten.”

Ronnie bounded up the steps to the second-floor apartment. As she entered the cozy space, she realized she was still smiling.

Brian pulled into a parking space in front of the dealership, and Ronnie smiled as several salesmen made quick tracks in their direction. Every dealer that morning had been eager to help the man in the luxury Lexus—only to discover that his female passenger was looking for a cheap preowned vehicle, thank you very much.

Even better, it turned out that Brian was a whiz at cars and could see through a sales smokescreen in a second. Fifteen minutes later, as Brian lifted the hood and examined her latest find, Ronnie thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t had to do this alone.

Brian shook his head at the salesman. “I thought you said this car had never been in an accident.”

“That’s what we understood from the woman who traded in this vehicle. We can only go on what the original owner has told us.”

Brian grunted. “Then you all aren’t doing your job.”

He gestured Ronnie over and turned his back on the salesman. “See here … and here … classic result of a front-end collision. Probably had to replace the hood and the front bumper, and it might’ve thrown other things out of whack. Who knows what that might mean for you in a year?”

Brian started a heated discussion with the salesman, and Ronnie moved on down the rows. She’d been excited about finally buying her first car, but all the cars she liked, she couldn’t afford. She’d wanted to look at cool SUVs and convertibles like Tiffany’s. Within the first ten minutes, she’d downgraded to sensible, five-year-old sedans in unpopular colors. The down payment on some ugly lemon was going to cost her the precious advance she’d saved for tuition. She resented the car already.

She stopped in front of a champagne-colored Civic and shaded her eyes from the sun. She squinted toward the price tag in the front windshield. She looked closer and called Brian over. He took one look and raised his eyebrows at her. The
salesman approached, and Brain began the usual discussion while Ronnie circled the car, trying not to appear anxious.

It was beautiful. A four-door sedan, sure, but a nice sporty line and a great color. She peered inside. Simple upholstery, with all the usual amenities. And only twenty-one thousand on the odometer. It
was
higher than her intended price range … but only by a few thousand dollars.

Brian fiddled under the hood and seemed to like what he saw. Ronnie crossed her fingers. After a morning of finding no cars even close to her price range, this little number seemed like a bargain. But why the great deal … what was wrong with it?

The salesman’s voice drifted in through the windows. “Former rental cars sell back to us at twenty thousand miles, and since they’ve been driven harder we lower our price.”

Ronnie settled behind the wheel. It fit her perfectly. If Brian said the engine looked okay, she would buy it. It would be more than she wanted to pay—even after she haggled the salesman down—but at least she would enjoy the car she was driving.

Forty minutes later, the salesman and his manager shook hands all around and ushered Ronnie and Brian out of the office.

“Congratulations. We’ll fix those few items, and you can pick the car up tomorrow.”

Ronnie smiled and thanked them, suppressing the butterflies in her stomach. Had she really just signed a loan agreement for that high of a monthly payment?

She settled into Brian’s passenger seat and thanked him quietly. As he pulled out onto the highway, she laid her head back against the soft leather and closed her eyes.

“Hey, Ronnie, don’t worry, seriously.” Brian sounded like he was grinning. “It’s always a little nerve-racking to get your first car, but—”

“It’s not the car I’m nervous about—it’s the car loan! I’ve never been on the hook for a monthly payment like that, ever.”

“Ahh, don’t worry about it. I bet you’ll be trading it in for a luxury model in a few months. You’ll have no trouble making the payments once you get onstage.”

Ronnie’s eyes flew open. “What did you just say?”

“I said it would be easy to make the payments once you go onstage. Heck,
you’ll
probably earn enough to pay for a full trade-up within a few weeks.”

“What makes you think I’m going onstage?”

Brian jerked in surprise. “What—you don’t want to?”

“I keep telling everybody—”

“Look, no offense, Ronnie, but it just seems silly, that’s all. You’re an attractive girl, you’ve got a great figure, and you’ll make a ton of money. No one understands what your problem is. I know you’re young, but you’re in the real world now and you have bills and obligations. You at least have the ability to make a good wage, unlike some others. Trust me, I’ve seen girls go through this for several years now, and once you get up there, you’ll wonder what the big deal was. Trust me.”

Ronnie sat in silence, her monthly expenses parading on the screen of her mind. Even working extra shifts, it was going to be tight. And there was still the advance payment for her tuition. Assuming she even got in.

Ronnie groaned and bent double, her head near her knees, her hair hanging down around her face. “Have you ever felt like you just wanted to crawl into bed, pull the covers over your head, and keep the world at bay for about a week?”

“All the time.”

Ronnie felt his hand find her shoulder and give it a gentle rub.

“It’ll be okay, Ronnie. Honest.”

Brian watched as Ronnie waved good-bye and bounced up the stairs to her apartment. Two hotties in one place. Maybe she’d be even better in bed than Tiffany was.
Sasha
, he reminded himself. And Ronnie would get a stage name, too—soon, if he had anything to do with it. She was so silly to keep protesting such an obvious step.

He turned out of the complex and onto a nearby tree-lined parkway. The subdivisions got bigger and more elegant as he passed, and his gaze lingered on the sweeping, gated communities.

Someday. Someday soon.

He slowed and pulled into a circular entrance with a discreet guardhouse. A uniformed man leaned out the window.

“Yes, sir?”

“I have a meeting with Marco Navarre.”

“Just a moment.” The guard scanned his computer screen, then peered at the monitor that showed Brian’s license plate number. In front of Brian, the tall gate began to open. “Okay, sir. It’s your fourth right, up the steep hill and—”

“I know where it is, thanks.”

Brian drove along several wide, hilly boulevards, admiring the view. Several new houses had gone up since he’d been here last. Well,
houses
wasn’t quite the word for it. By any definition, these were mansions. Not the sprawling manor homes of the “old money” elite in Buckhead, but certainly all the understated elegance of the new
money South—entrepreneurs who owned blue-chip businesses, technology companies … and adult-entertainment empires.

He turned into a cul-de-sac. At the far side, a long driveway led upward to a graceful building hidden among massive trees on the side of a hill. Brian drove into one of the many bays under the house and took an elevator to the main level. The elevator opened onto a wide front porch with a dizzying view of the steep hill below. He stayed close to the wall and rang the doorbell.

At the first ring, Marco himself answered the door.

“There you are!” Marco waved him inside and shut the door. “The others will be here soon, but I’m dying to know.”

“Everything went fine.”

“And she …”

“She bought a nice little Civic—about three thousand dollars higher than her top price range.”

“Excellent! Well, sit down, sit down. I’ll get you a drink and you can tell me all about it.”

Brian ventured into the seating area near a wide sweep of windows. Glass doors led out onto a large deck that seemed designed to induce acrophobia. Brian had been out there only once, and even during Marco’s parties, which had a way of dropping one’s inhibitions, he had never been out again. Before Proxy came on the scene, stoned loyalists had sometimes been dared into walking the banister, and Brian had no intention of joining that group. One girl—there for the men’s amusement during a bachelor party—had fallen and broken her back. They’d given her a generous sum to keep her quiet during two years of rehab.

Proxy had heard about it and supposedly demanded an end to the frat-party shenanigans, but Brian wouldn’t chance it. There were far better ways of proving his loyalty.

“So.” Marco came around the side of a wide couch, handed him a glass, and took a seat nearby. “How’d you arrange it?”

Brian shrugged. “I made her think that all the cars she could afford were wrecks under the hood. Once we finally saw a nice-looking car close enough to her price range to seem feasible to her, I gave her the green light.”

“And that one …?”

“Actually, that one wasn’t too bad. No obvious problems.” At Marco’s grunt, Brian made an apologetic face. “You can’t have everything. But it was a rental car so it’ll probably require some expensive repairs within six months or so. And if it doesn’t, we can always arrange something.”

“Excellent. Well done.”

“The other thing is—I think she may be easier than we think to get up onstage. I got the impression that her money worries were working overtime way before the financial burden of the car. I don’t know what other hooks you’re pursuing, but I’d keep ’em active.”

“Good.” Marco had a pensive look on his face. “With your typical waitress, we could expect her to ask for a stage audition in—what—three and a half months?”