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“We’re here,” I added. “Shall I meet you inside?”
“Jesus Christ.” She gasped, rolling off to the side. Frantically, she tugged at her dress, stretching it right down over her thighs until it was like it was supposed to be. “That wine must have been stronger than I thought.”
“No,” I said simply, eyeing her flushed cheeks and bright eyes. “You just stopped lying to yourself for a few minutes.”
She took a deep breath and looked back at me. “Rain check.”
With that, she snatched up her purse and got out of the car.
I adjusted my pants and leaned forward to open the partition. “Go home, could you, Will?”
The ever-silent man nodded, hit the blinker, and I sat back in the seat.
Dahlia Lloyd was a walking, talking, sin of a woman.
One who had me going out of my fucking mind.
***
I finished the resume and threw it straight into the metal trashcan to the left of me.
My father’s flagship strip club needed two new dancers, and so far, nobody had been a good enough fit. None of the girls in the other clubs wanted to move to Foxies, and I understood that. It was the first club, but not the best. Goldies was the number one bar we owned.
Dad rubbed his hand over his salt-and-pepper beard. “What kind of floozies are you interviewing?”
I gave him a dark look over the top of the newest resume. “None. Their resumes aren’t good enough.”
“They’re swinging around a pole with their tits out. What kind of fucking resume do they need?”
“To not have a background in prostitution.” I dropped the papers I was holding across the desk in front of him. Whoever Poppy was, she was the third woman in a row to have been a prostitute trying to “better herself.”
I understood that, but the moment she got caught sucking some guy’s dick in a private room for extra tips was the moment we got shut down.
Foxies wasn’t that hard up to take the risk. Not yet.
“That complicates it.” Dad folded the resume in two and handed it back to me to throw into the trash. “Did you put that on the advert?”
“Helena did it. She said she had a few places to advertise it as well as the usual ones.” I filed the ‘maybe’ ones into a paper folder. “Face facts, Dad. We’re not the only big competitor on the Strip now. Maybe we should put two clubs together. Less rent but more revenue.”
His eyes, as dark as mine, glared at me. “You want to cut our portfolio?”
I sighed. I’d been dreading this conversation. “Listen to me, all right? I’ve been crunching the numbers and then some. If we consolidated Spark and Thunder, we’d pay thirty percent of the total rent we currently do. We can move Shawna and Darla to Swing since they’re bi and that caters to the bi crowd with the mixed dancers. Alana and Marie have already expressed a desire to move to Passion since that’s their crowd. We’re mixing sexuality more than we need to. Take Alana and Marie from the straight club into the lesbian club, put the bi’s into the bi club, and instantly, we have space to accommodate into Spark. Regina is quitting next month. Kaitlyn is pregnant, and Sally is going back to school. That’s Thunder’s staff who can’t assimilate into Spark.”
“The bar staff?”
“We split them between the others. They’re always short. Play is understaffed four out of seven nights despite our best efforts, and Sugar’s staff is overstretched. We’re playing with the law with them because they need ‘round the clock staffing.” I tapped my fingers against the desk and passed him a financial breakdown for two months ago. “Dad, I know you don’t want to sell, but Thunder just isn’t as profitable as the others anymore. We’re doing the staff a disservice by not putting them in front of the biggest audience.”
A “hmph” escaped him, but he picked up the report anyway.
It’d been a long time since he’d been involved in the business. The last time was really seven years ago. Since then, he’d handed the control to me. He was still named as co-owner and president while I was co-owner, CEO, and COO, and I’d thought that’d been the shift in our power.
He’d always been my idol. The things we’d been through didn’t bear speaking about, so we didn’t. We kept them buried and ignored them as much as possible. Dad insisted that we moved on and focused on the present and the future, but that didn’t stop me thinking about the past.
About Mom.
About Penelope.
About him.
Thirty-years-old and my demons still silenced me. Still controlled me. Still dictated happiness to me. I was thankful that the biggest demon was the man sitting opposite me, no matter that he wasn’t evil.
No. Benedict Fox wasn’t evil. He was heartbroken. Although, maybe, they were one and the same, especially as time passed.
