“What?” Lydia shoots me another glance, her expression lined with confusion.
“Err, never mind.” I don’t think she’s ready to know just how confusing dating can be.
Chapter Four
“Are you sure you want to do this, Lydia?” My superior socializing skills want her to say yes. Yes, because it’ll be fun. Yes, because this is crazy. Yes, because we don’t have anything better lined up for the weekend. But as her best friend, I want her to think this over. For those very same reasons.
It’s Saturday morning and we’re sitting in the parking lot outside of Double Diamonds. The strip club. Gentlemen’s club. Whatever. The website didn’t look nearly as seedy as I expected it to, but it’s still a strip club. We’re here because my best friend the virgin wants to go inside and ask the owner to help her auction her virginity. To Rhys, specifically.
I know.
It sounds too nuts to be true.
It’s insanity.
But yet that’s what’s happening. I asked around yesterday and it seems that Rhys spends a lot of time at this gentlemen’s club. And there were rumors of professionals. And by professionals I mean hookers. I relayed the information to Lydia at lunch and by last night she’d come up with a plan. The aforementioned plan of selling her virginity at some kind of auction, to Rhys. There is no way this plan is actually happening. Nada, zip, zilch. Lydia is the good girl. The good friend. The good daughter. The good everything. And this idea she has is nuts. It’s not that I don’t think Rhys will bite, he will. It’s that I don’t think we’re about to encounter a strip club owner made of gold.
Anyway.
Into Double Diamonds we go.
I expect we’ll be kicked out. Or arrested for solicitation. Or hogtied and tossed onto a plane bound for Mexico. What? I have a vivid imagination.
Instead we’re asked if we’d like applications, which, I’m not gonna lie, is a little bit flattering. Sure, I already have a job, but you never know when you might need a back-up plan.
“I’d like to speak to the owner,” Lydia replies, shoulders squared and head held high.
“Me too,” I add, because I can’t let her go back there alone, assuming the head honcho is here and we’re allowed a meeting. Reason number one: I’m a good friend and a good friend would never send you into the back office at a strip club by yourself. Lydia is blinded by love and I can’t let her make a decision she’ll later regret. Reason number two: This has the potential to be real entertaining and there is no way I’m missing out. I stuff the application into my handbag as Lydia shoots me a look. I shrug—I kept the application because I’m curious, not because I’m actually going to apply. Probably.
We’re escorted past a few elevated platforms with the requisite poles in the center, down a long dark hallway and through a door.
The door leads to… an office. It’s a nice office. Really nice. It’s quiet and a row of windows floods the space with natural light. There should be a view of the parking lot because we’re a block off the Strip, surrounded by high-rise hotels and tourist traps. But instead there’s a courtyard of sorts. It looks like a section of the parking lot was walled off and turned into an outdoor patio. The wall blocks out the view beyond from our vantage point just inside the office doors so all I can see is a flower garden and a fountain. A freaking fountain. This is super disappointing because I was envisioning a dark room with bad lighting and an overweight white man smoking a cigar behind a desk while a couple of goons stood at attention ready to protect him if the need arose.
Ahead of us there’s a seating area with leather couches and a couple of armchairs. A coffee table sits in the middle, made of what looks like reclaimed wood set in a herringbone pattern, a slim metal frame supporting. There’s a coffee bar built into the side wall—wooden cabinets topped with a slab of sleek marble, an industrial coffee maker and glass jars of sweeteners and granola bars lining the countertop.
And there’s a desk.
Just one.
Where a curvy woman who must be in her fifties sits, beaming at our arrival, making me feel as though I’ve just stopped at a friend’s house after school instead of into the back room at a strip club.
It’s a bit of a letdown if I’m honest. I thought this meeting was going to be a bit more dramatic, but this woman looks like she runs a book club, not a strip club. The kind of book club that only discusses books with fade-to-black sex scenes or, worse, books with no romance at all. Ugh. Lydia doesn’t need me here for this. These two will be exchanging crockpot recipes while they sort out Rhys’ life for him with this pseudo-auction.
I hate not being needed.
“I’m Sally,” the woman says, rising from her desk with another smile. “You ladies wanted to see Vince? Can I offer you a coffee or water before you go in?”
Vince. Okay, now we’re talking. Vince sounds like he could be a goon smoking a cigar. Vince could be sitting in a dimly lit office that smells like desperation and looks like the set of a mafia drama on HBO.
“No, I’m fine, thank you,” Lydia says, politely declining the beverage offer.
“I’m good too,” I add, holding up my half-empty iced coffee cup, rattling the ice with a shake of my wrist. “Still working on this, thank you.”
The woman nods and moves around her desk, gesturing towards a closed door as she walks. Reaching it, she opens it and waves us through, telling Vince we’re the young ladies who requested to see him. The door shuts softly behind us.
This is it. The office. The head honcho.
There’s no smoke.
No goons.
And Vince? Vince is not who I was expecting. Not even close.
Chapter Five
Holy mother of shit. Vince is hot. Young and hot. Well, not that young—I’d guess he’s in his thirties, but I was expecting a fat man in his seventies, so he’s young comparatively. He’s also the same man I saw in the lobby of the Windsor a few days ago, talking to Canon.
Which means he’s come back to me, doesn’t it? I think it does. Sure, it could be a coincidence. It could. Canon is friends with Vince, so he stopped by the hotel. Lydia likes Rhys, so we stopped by the strip club. Blah, blah, blah. Coincidence? Nope. Because coincidence is really just another word for fate. It’s true, look it up.
I grin. Big, big, big.
I’ve never had a thing for older guys. I’ve never been that girl who fantasized about seducing her teacher or her coach or her older brother’s best friend. I’ve never fantasized about seducing anyone really, mainly because in my experience boys haven’t been that hard to get. I’ve always dated guys from school and it was always easy enough to determine if there was a mutual attraction before I got too invested in crushing on someone.
Vince is delicious. Vince is every inappropriate fantasy I’ve never had wrapped up into one package.
This day is already going so much better than I could ever had anticipated. Maybe Lydia’s plan isn’t so nuts after all. See! Another coincidence! Who sells their virginity? No one, that’s who. Especially not twenty-two-year-old women with jobs and a history of being good girls.