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Eric was ready this time, and his arm thrown over Rhianne’s shoulders kept her close to his side as they sauntered across the floor. He listened carefully. While he couldn’t speak anything but barebones Spanish, he was good at tracking body language. As far as he could tell, the bartender was limiting himself to extravagant compliments and didn’t cross the line from flirting into come-ons.
“Oh yeah,” Eric interrupted, taking a swallow of his beer to talk. “Sweetie, ask your friend about what we mentioned last time, huh? Getting a little help?” He kept his tone casual and helped himself to some tortilla chips that were piled in a bowl on the bar, then gazed around at the bar’s décor.
Again, he couldn’t understand all Rhianne said, but knew it was flirtatious by Zé Carlos’s smirk at him. The slimeball looked like the cat that got the goddamn keys to the dairy. Eric kept his face neutral.
“Yeah, we’re serious about wanting to find a maid,” Rhianne said in English. “And, you know, to save you asking your guy, we could go talk to him in person.” She leaned forward on her high stool, and Eric’s heart thumped a little. This wasn’t what they’d arranged—
“Well, okay.” Zé Carlos shrugged. “He’ll be in Mint. It’s the place he likes to go to unwind. But Arturo isn’t a guy to mess around. Oh, and another thing. Mint takes big bucks to even get in. And that’s just the cover charge, you know what I mean?” He rubbed his thumb over two fingers, indicating money. “Keeps out the trash.”
“Sounds like my kind of place,” Eric replied with the slickest grin he could manage.
Laughing, the bartender pulled out his phone and made a call, apparently to his contact at this club, instructing him to tell Arturo personally that Zé Carlos was sending a couple his way. He heard the hitch of Rhianne’s breath and knew what it meant.
We’re on.
He wished they could have strategized more in the cab, but he had to use the time to call Charlie and bring him up to speed. If they disappeared after this, he needed his team to know where to start looking for him. The journey wasn’t long, and in no time at all they were getting through the muscle at the club’s doors to pay the cover to the hostess.
“Okay?” he murmured when another hostess, this one in booty shorts and a leather bra, led them inside the main part of the club. Rhianne nodded, looking more together than Eric felt.
The place was dark and smelled of men’s cologne even though all he could see around them were women. Club music pulsed so loudly that Eric could feel it in his chest. He tried to take in all the details of the space without looking obvious about the recon, glancing around as if he was watching the women while actually trying to locate the exits. It wasn’t a surprise that he couldn’t spot any.
The closer they got to the cordoned-off VIP section, the harder it got to keep his cool. He stifled a flinch at a woman screeching as she gyrated on the dance floor—it brought back the girl from yesterday, screaming and beating at the men dragging her into the compound.
The hostess motioned for them to stay put while she walked up to a thickset man sitting alone at a booth, flanked by men—obviously bodyguards—standing in a semicircle behind him. She bent to say something in his ear. He fondled her ass as she talked, squeezing, then slapping it hard enough that they heard it over the music. He then looked at them and beckoned them to him.
“Hola. You wanted to speak to me?” he asked in accented English.
“I’m told you’re the guy to see. Eli and Raquel Cain.” Eric stuck out his hand.
The handshake between the men was a test of grip strength which Eric easily won. Despite that, Arturo smiled, all charm, mainly for Rhianne.
“Zé Carlos sent us,” Eric said. “Seems you might have what we need?” He pulled Rhianne forward with him to sit in the half-moon booth.
“No.” Arturo’s upraised hand had Eric stopping. “No business talk in front of a lady.” He gestured at Rhianne.
Crap.Rhianne was angry—Eric could tell by the way she froze—but she played it off well, twirling a lock of her newly waved hair and smiling vacantly.
“Oh, I love this song!” she exclaimed. “I’m gonna dance, then I’ll go grab us drinks, honey.”
Before he’d processed that, she leaned up to kiss him goodbye. It wasn’t a real kiss by any stretch of the imagination, but when her lips touched his, it burned through him like a brand. He had to choke back the gasp that tried to escape him.
Rhianne stepped back, wide-eyed, and, out of the corners of his eyes, he saw her touch her mouth. That she’d reacted to the kiss in the same way he had had him biting back a smirk of satisfaction. With difficulty, he focused on Arturo…who started by asking about the business Eric, or rather Eli, owned.
He’s really checked into the backstory Charlie created for us, Eric realized, trying to recall all the details of the properties “Eli” had bought and flipped.
“And now you’re looking for ‘help,’” Arturo said, tilting his head at the hostess showing a party to another table, his meaning clear. “Not the kind you can hire in America. Help that knows her place, yes? But that’s something you wouldn’t like getting out, huh? Any more than I like anyone playing me dirty. Understand?”
Eric laughed loudly, playing up the jackass frat boy vibe with everything he had. “Play you? Dude, if I played you, I wouldn’t be able to come back in a year or two for a newer model. You do you, man. I don’t give a shit as long as I get what I want.”
Arturo laughed in reply and clapped him on the shoulder, seeming convinced that he had Eli’s measure.
Eric’s skin crawled more at his own words than at Arturo’s touch. Jesus, he was glad Rhianne wasn’t there to hear what he’d said.
“You know, I think we can do business.” Arturo tipped his head back and regarded Eric through half-lidded eyes. “That’s why I wish to invite you and your girl to my place for a…party, shall we say.”
“Party?” Eric parroted, his skin prickling.
“Yes, to meet people like you for a weekend of fun.” Arturo gave a smile as if at a private joke. “Like an all-inclusive resort,entendés? Then we’ll see if we can, as you Americans say, strike a deal.”
