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Maverick steps into the street. I follow without even looking, then spend the rest of the short walk across marveling that I just did that. I’ve been on alert for so long, always ready to jump back at the first sign of danger, to protect myself in whatever ways I can. I can’t remember the last time anyone else looked out for me. Even at his best, Royal never protected me.
Maverick leads me into the diner, down the short hallway where the bathrooms are, and into a cluttered, poorly lit office with a desk where an old desktop computer swims in receipts and papers. Filing cabinets line the entire opposite call, making the space cramped, and the smell of fryer oil from the diner creeps into the room.
“Tía mía,” Mav says to Scarlet, who’s standing behind the desk, leaning on the wall. “Got a new one for you.”
Scarlet sets down her bottle of Mountain Dew and gives him stern look. “Like I told her, we filled the position.”
“Not for the diner,” Mav says. “She’s here for upstairs work.”
“Ah,” Scarlet says, nodding and looking me over with more interest. “Can you dance, honey? We just lost one of our dancers.”
“I was on the dance team at school until a few weeks ago,” I say. “And I’ve done pole classes. I’m not a pro, but I’m strong, I can keep a beat, and I’m a fast learner.”
“I figured you’d just wait tables,” Maverick says, looking me over the same way his aunt is, like I’m suddenly more interesting. “Dad will definitely want to see what you can do.”
A nervous tremor starts in my belly, and I have to force my feet to stay planted so I don’t turn and bolt. Garnering the interest of powerful men has never ended well for me.
But it led me here, so here I am. If I turn back now, I’ll be standing at the same dead end I was an hour ago.
I remind myself that if others can use my body, I can use it too. It won’t hurt me any more now than when they did it.
So I smile, just like Jackie, and extend my hand to the diner’s owner. “I appreciate the opportunity.”
“Oh,” she says, laughing in surprise. She takes my hand and shakes, giving me a warm smile. “I’ve got tables waiting, but I’ll be up later. I can show you the ropes a little, the stuff the menfolk might not think to share.” She gives me a wink, and Maverick a quick kiss on the cheek, before leaving us alone in the office.
“This way,” Maverick says, his hand falling on my lower back. And god, stupid bitch that I am, I swear I nearly faint at the contact, even though I know it means less than nothing to a guy who doesn’t even remember if we fucked two weeks after the fact. Maybe I really am a whore now, if that barest contact has me swooning. I try to keep my head screwed on while he leads me through a side door into another small office.
It’s like stepping into another world. The room is so white it feels sterile—white walls, white ceiling, white lighting, white tile flooring. A man I’ve never seen before sits at the elegant new Mac on the single piece of furniture, a wide desk made of glass, with a white vase filled with white lilies on one end, perfuming the entire office.
“Got a waitress for you,” Mav says. “Maybe a dancer.”
The man pushes back from his desk, looking me up and down. He’s a thinner, hotter, sharper version of Maverick’s dad. Instead of a big scary gangster with neck tattoos and muscles bulging inside his t-shirt, he looks like a professional in a black-on-black shirt and tie, his only visible ink a partial skull tattoo stretched over the back of his hand. A pair of wire-rim glasses perches on his nose, and he fixes me with intense eyes of a color gold I’ve only ever seen on a cat.
That’s when I notice the gold legs of his chair and the desk, the gold fracture lines in the white vase, as if the whole office was made to complement him—the subtle gold accents, the stark white contrasting with his black attire, black hair, and golden brown skin.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m—Gloria. Am I supposed to use my real name?”
He cocks a brow, looking amused as he stands and shakes my hand. “I’d have to know it for the paperwork, wouldn’t I?”
“Right,” I say, laughing nervously. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone so hot in real life. Just looking at him is literally making sweat break out along my hairline. How am I supposed to take off my clothes in front of him, display all my flaws to someone who has none?
“Most of the girls use stage names upstairs,” he says, his smooth voice caressing each word with a Spanish accent. “You’re welcome to do that, if you join our staff. I’m Lennox North. I believe you met my wife already. She runs the diner downstairs. I run the club upstairs. We own them together.”
“Thank you so much for giving me a chance,” I say. “I can dance, wait tables, scrub toilets, literally anything. I don’t care. I just need a job.”
The door opposite us swings open, and another guy who must be a member of the North family walks in. He stops short and looks me over, and I do the same to him. He’s around myage or a bit older, with a bulkier build than Maverick and a cocky strut as he walks into the room and strolls around me, smiling and nodding in appreciation. When he’s done a full circle, he lets out a low whistle.
“Damn,” he says, looking down at me with hooded eyes and wetting his lips. “You don’t look like the type we usually get crawling in begging for work.”
“You have to earn the crawling and begging,” I say, smirking up at him.
He stares at me a long moment, and I start to think I read the situation wrong.
But then he laughs and turns to Maverick. “Good work,parce,” he says, holding out a hand. “I like her already. Now let’s see if she looks as good without clothes as she does with them.”
“She does,” Maverick says, doing a little slap-clasp-shake combo thing with a shit-eating grin on his face.
“Damn, you already fucked her?” the guy asks. “Save some for the rest of us once in a while.”
