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“Does Juliet know?” Willow stage-whispered.
“No, only you and, of course, Samson.”
“How—where do you know him from?”
“You know I’m originally from New York. When I was younger,much younger, I worked for Samson in his Brooklyn club.” She kept the fact she stripped at the club to herself. There was only so much of her past that she was willing to share.
Lisbeth sat in her fifteen-year-old beater in the Oasis’s parking lot and mentally rehearsed the lie she would tell to get the bartender job advertised in the front window. She’d been turned down over the last two weeks by the larger, less seedy bars in the five boroughs due to lack of experience—more like no experience. She desperately needed a job, and with no marketable skills, Lisbeth had turned to waitressing and bartending. She managed to land a waitressing job four weeks ago, but after messing up numerous orders and breaking half the dishware, the owner told her never to return.
Two weeks later, her meager savings of ninety-two dollars went to the shabby room she rented and the twelve-pack of Ramen noodles she scored at Target. Hopeless and hungry, Lisbeth stared at the tumbledown, windowless building as a last resort, reasoning even she should be able to land a job in such a sleazy club.
Releasing the door handle, she used her body to push against the Toyota’s creaky door. She ducked her head and ran between the raindrops to the front of the building, where a crooked neon sign advertising the Oasis hung over the door—theAand theIburned out. Lisbeth pulled on the metal door, entered the dark, somewhat damp club, and let her eyes adjust to the dim lighting.
At two in the afternoon, only a few guys were at the bar, but the music blared through the room as a blonde in ridiculously high stilettos and a bored expression circled the stripper pole in a fringed bikini.
“Oh, my God.” A smirky smile covered her face. “But that’s not all, is it?”
“We had a short, very short . . . fling, nothing more than a flirtation.”
The lies left a sour taste in Lisbeth’s mouth. Fling and flirtation greatly diminished her feelings for Samson at the time, but perhaps Willow would buy it, and Lisbeth could climb out of the bottomless pit she’d dug for herself.
“It was way more than a fling. The look on your face Saturday and your expression now says full-out, head-over-heels, sex-a-thon.”
“Willow!” Lisbeth squeaked as her hand flew to her mouth.
“I can’t believe it.” Willow smiled widely. “My straight-laced, business-first boss got down and dirty with that delicious piece of eye candy.”
“Will you please stop?” Lisbeth tried to sound serious, but a grin spread over her face too.
“I want all the gory details. How does Samson look without a shirt? How does he look without pants? I saw the tats peeking past his collar. Are there others all over his body? How many times did you do it? How big is his—”
“Stop!” Lisbeth yelled.
“Are you all right?” Evelyn called from the front office.
“Yes, all good.” Lisbeth glared at Willow and whispered. “Not a word of this to anyone, especially Evelyn.”
“Of course.” Willow agreed with a huge grin. “As long as you answer all my questions, your secrets are safe with me.”
“You are impossible.”
“Well?”
“Samson’s built like a gladiator. Most of his upper body is covered in tattoos. We did it every chance we got, and yes, his dick is huge.”
“And you still have the hots for him.”
“I do not. I haven’t thought of him in ages. I had no idea he owned that club because my assistant didn’t think it was necessary to dig deeper into his corporate name.” Lisbeth flashed Willow a smug smirk. “Plus, he barely remembered me.”
Willow shrugged. “Sounds like a shit-ton of lies to me.”
“Well, it’s not. It’s the truth.”
She childishly refused to give Willow the satisfaction of being right.
“You ought to check your expression in the mirror because it doesn’t match your words.”
“You’re being impossible. What Samson and I had was nothing more than a playful fling. I was barely twenty-one, and it seems like a lifetime ago.”
