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“This club is a legacy that needs to continue, but more than that, it needs to grow.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
SHAWN
The bar is quiet, and I like that. Until the room that all the men went into explodes with clapping and shouting. I don’t understand what’s happening, but I decide I don’t need to know. They’re conducting some kind of business there, and if they wanted me involved, they’d have invited me in.
Then I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. Slowly, I turn my head, looking over my shoulder toward the front door where I expect to see Poison standing glaring at me, but that’s not who is there at all.
In fact, it’s a stranger.
An absolutely gorgeous stranger.
She’s tall, legs for days kind of tall. In fact, her legs are probably the length of my entire body. She looks like she could be a model. She’s wearing oversized sunglasses, and I watch as she rips them off as she moves into the bar.
She puts her foot out, popping a hip before she places her fist on that popped hip before she scans the room. Her eyes land on me, and she frowns slightly. Then, as they slide down my body and come back to meet mine, she smiles.
“You don’t look like a clubwhore,” she announces.
“I’m not,” I state.
Her smile widens, and she clears her throat slightly then moves closer to me, stopping a few feet away. She tips her chin, her eyes locking in on mine.
“I’m Ryan,” she announces.
I stare at her, unsure of what I’m supposed to say about that. I suck in a breath and let it out slowly. I decide to introduce myself, because I have no reason not to. I have no idea who this woman is other than absolutely beautiful.
“Shawn,” I say, giving her a smile.
She nods her head once, then moves past me and around the table to sink down beside me. She crosses her long legs, which look even longer sitting beside me. I slide my tongue across my bottom lip and wonder what the hell is going on.
“I’m sure you have no idea who I am. I was once you,” she says, her voice soft and almost sweet.
“Once me?” I ask.
She nods, her smile so kind that I can’t help myself but match it. Her energy just seems so damn good.
“An old lady. One of their women. That’s what you are, right? Who do you belong to?”
I wrinkle my nose at the belong to part, and she throws her head back laughing. It’s a noise that sounds like a song. It’s incredible. I stare at her, my lips parted in awe. Then she straightens and wrinkles her own nose.
“It’s archaic, right? But that’s what gets them off. The whole my woman, my old lady, me man business. Whatever,” she says, lifting her hand and waving it in the air.
“Elvis,” I say. Her brows snap together. “King,” I correct myself.
Her brows lift, and it’s her turn to stare at me for a moment. “He gave you his real name?” she asks.
I nod my head a couple of times, but she continues to just stare at me, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. “I was with Atomic for five years, and he never told me his given name, not once. I still don’t know it.”
I can’t deny that I let out a sigh of relief that she isn’t here for Elvis. I don’t think I could have handled it. She’s just so damn gorgeous. I know he would take one look at her, and I would be left in the dust without a doubt. And if he’d already been with her, she would have to have been the one who got away, no way around that at all.
“Atomic?” I ask.
She nods her head, and for a moment, a look of insecurity and simultaneous shyness crosses her features, then her cheeks tint pink as she flicks her gaze down to the table before she brings it back to meet mine.
“Yeah,” she exhales. “Although he won’t be happy to see me here.”
