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His features resolved before me. From across the floor, they’d been blurrily appealing, but up close, I knew they were the kind of collection that had broken many a heart. He had bright blue eyes beneath thick brows, a strong nose with a little crick in the center that gave him some character (otherwise, he would’ve been blandly stunning), and beneath a short beard, a classically handsome jawline.
He looked — shit! — like a real specimen of a man. A Disney prince who went off the compound, lived a little, and came back with a couple of hidden scars and a barrel of good stories. Wait, did that make me the princess?
He also, relatedly, looked mad.
“H-hi,” I managed to stammer out.
In the blink of an eye, his face morphed from enraged to jovial, kidding even.
Tate stuck his hand out. “Hi, I’m Evil Prick. And who might you be?”
I raised an eyebrow. Was he really gonna let my insolence roll right off his back?
I hesitated a beat — apparently, he was. Tate showed no signs of firing me. A surge of relief flooded my body, and I clasped his hand in mine, riding the adrenaline rush of, well, keeping my job.
As I faltered for words, the small, rotund man standing at Tate’s side piped up.
With a sneer, he said, “She’s just some waitress, sir. Far below your pay grade.”
Okay, I would’ve been happy to just stay silent, mind my business, and be grateful to work another day, but that was a bridge too far. I might be trailer trash from the Vegas slums, but I wasn’t below anyone’s pay grade, certainly not this asshole’s.
“I’m Kiki,” I declared. That didn’t feel like enough, so I elaborated, “I work here.”
Tate’s eyes roamed over my outfit in a way that made my skin tingle beneath my bedazzled tights.
“Yes, I can see that. The scrubbing was also a hint,” he replied gesturing to the table. “Paying customers don’t usually do the mopping.”
My face flushed and I tried to keep my gaze from following the visual path from the top of his tie down to the waistband of his pants.
“I—”
“Jack,” Tate said, turning to the man on his right. “How long has she worked here for?”
“I can check the records, sir, if you’d like.”
Maybe it was the heat of the moment, or maybe it was a long-building resentment to Dazzlers, but in that split second, my tongue got away from me. My dad always said I had a temper like a rattlesnake — didn’t want trouble, but if you got too close, I’d shake my tail and raise hell.
“Hey, I’m standing right in front of you,” I spat. “You can ask me the questions. No need to send your little minion running around.”
Tate bit back what looked like a grin creasing his tan cheeks. “My minion, eh?”
Well, I’d already started the rant that was sure to seal my fate at Dazzlers. Might as well fucking finish it.
“Yeah, your minion.” Said minion was about to interject, you could tell by his puffed-out cheeks, but I cut him off. “The least you can do as the owner of this casino is to treat me with some basic decency.”
“How do you know I own Dazzlers?” Tate asked, with a mixture of disturbing calm and a little something else. Was it regret? There was a taste on my tongue like he hadn’t wanted to be ID’d.
“The posters,” I said slowly, making sure to enunciate. “You’re all over town making that idiotic pose.”
I copied his infamous stance from the signs — thumbs tucked into belt loops, shoulders squared and a sexy scowl. Whichever photographer gave him that instruction was apparently more accustomed to working with male strippers than billionaires. The whole effect was very 2000s boy band.
Jack the minion’s face flamed red.
“Sir, she can’t talk to you like that!” he squealed. “I’ll fire her right now, this very instant, you just give the word.”
Tate held up a hand as his lips twitched upward. “No need, Jack. She — Kiki, rather — is right. The posters are ridiculous.”
“You look wonderful in them, if I may say so, sir,” Jack dithered.
Tate’s chest rose with tight exasperation at the man’s slime-soaked words. What is it like, I wondered, to have someone follow you around all day, saying everything you want to hear? Thinking about my aching feet and my blistered hands, for a fleeting moment, this sounded like a dream. It’d be like floating through perfumed air. Everything around me would become all the sweeter.
But no sooner had I thought it, then I realized the sour notes in the aroma. You’d feel as though the world around you were built on trembling ground, like your reality was fading in and out with the yeses of lesser men. Clearly, it was starting to wear on Tate, perhaps had been for some time. He didn’t look thrilled by the constant praise. He looked exhausted, like every second he refrained from rolling his eyes was a dull chore. Despite my long-ingrained hatred for the Dazzlers boy wonder, my heart prickled with pity. My world might suck, but at least it was all mine.
