“Iowa’s a very nice place,” he says. “It’s the ones from Maryland you want to watch out for.”
Oh. He heard Lydia’s comment about selling her to a seedy businessman who is not Rhys. Not that Rhys is seedy. He’s not, not really. A little stupid in my opinion, but not seedy. Wait, that’s unkind. I know he’s book-smart, just love-stupid. But it’s fine because Lydia is gonna fix him right up.
“Haha, you kidder, you.” Lydia deflects, clearly uncomfortable that he overheard her and still a bit unsure about this entire setup.
“I’m serious,” he responds, his gaze landing on mine. “As a skydiver.”
Oh, my God. He remembered our conversation from earlier. I wonder if he thought about me today while I was thinking about him? Swoon. I’ve got the swoons. There is definitely chemistry happening here between us. A pull. A delicious gravitational force at work.
I wet my lips while I steady myself, then I smile. “Yeah, that was a good one. Skydiving safety is no joke.”
Vince dips his head towards me in acknowledgment, the hint of a smirk on his face before he turns back to Lydia. “It worked,” he tells her. “Rhys is here.”
Lydia leaves with Vince, off to scam the love of her life into purchasing her and taking her home for sex. Scam might be too harsh a word, it’s for his own good. It’s an awful lot of work to go through to get laid, that’s all I know.
I plop into a chair and toss my legs over the side to get comfortable, then bite my bottom lip to keep from smiling like a lunatic. Because Vince. Is. Here. I drop my head over the other arm of the chair on a groan as I think about everything I want to do to him. Or him to me. Either, both, whatever. I have got to find out if he’s available before I fall any harder.
“Everything okay?”
It’s Staci. She’s one of the dancers here, the one who took Lydia shopping today and helped prep her for tonight. I straighten up in the chair and smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just daydreaming. I mean, waiting on Lydia. She just went out.” I wave a hand in the direction of the door to emphasize Lydia’s departure.
“Cool,” Staci replies, tossing a makeup bag onto the vanity before rooting around inside of it in search of something or other. She’s in yoga pants and a t-shirt, her hair damp and combed straight, so I’m guessing she’s preparing to go home versus preparing to go on stage.
“Done for the night?” I question as she squirts a dollop of moisturizer onto her fingertips before working it onto her face.
“Yup.” She nods as she tosses her face cream back into her makeup bag before dumping the entire thing into her handbag. “I’m gonna Netflix and chill with myself and I cannot wait. It’s been a long week.” She starts to hoist her bag over her shoulder and I realize this might be my golden opportunity to get some answers on Vince.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” She nods distractedly as she rests her weight on one hip, freeing her cell phone from her bag as she turns to look at me.
“What do you know about Vince?”
“Vince?” She seems a bit caught off guard, as if she wasn’t expecting this line of questioning from me. “I mean, he’s my boss?” She ends the sentence as a question, as if she has no idea what information I’m seeking. I’m not sure how that’s possible, because look at him.
“Is he with anyone?”
“Ah.” She smiles now, looking me over with new interest. “I don’t think so.”
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know.” She laughs. “I think he works a lot. He’s kinda serious, don’t you think?” She shrugs like she hasn’t given any thought to this.
“So he’s not with any of the girls?” I press. I really need to know what I’m up against tonight. “Casually?”
“No, definitely not. It’s kind of an unspoken rule around here. Vince doesn’t cross those boundaries.”
What I’m hearing is the coast is clear for me to cross some boundaries with Vince. He’s becoming more and more interesting to me by the second.
“I don’t think he’s been with anyone seriously since Gwen,” she adds, throwing me. Was Gwen a dancer who broke his heart? Did she run off with a customer? Break an ankle while wearing a stripper heel and retire to Arizona and force him to implement his no-fraternization policy with the dancers? Or did Gwen have nothing to do with the club? Maybe she was his high school sweetheart… and ran off with his best customer—a tech nerd who made billions when the stock for his app went public.
I really need to lock down my imagination.
I’m about to ask for clarity on this Gwen character when Staci’s phone rings. She accepts the call while giving me her apologies about having to run. I grab a cluster of grapes and resume my position relaxing in the chair, popping grapes into my mouth while I wait. Almost as soon as Staci leaves the door swings open again and Lydia appears, collapsing against the door the moment it’s swung shut again.
She’s wearing a man’s suit jacket over the negligée she went out there in and I don’t think it would take an astrophysicist to figure out that it’s Rhys’ jacket. Not that there’s an astrophysicist hanging around to weigh in on the topic. Or maybe there is, what do I know? There may very well be an entire group of astrophysicists hanging out downstairs. Maybe astrophysics is a field filled with kinky fuckers, but my money is on virgins living with their mothers. I’ve been known to be wrong a time or ten though, so don’t take my word on it.
“Nice jacket,” I greet her before popping another grape into my mouth.
“Payton.” She braces against the door and kicks the heels on her feet off one at a time. They clatter across the floor with a thunk as she exhales. “That was horrible.”
“What happened?” I sit up, bracing myself for something awful, but to be honest, my money is still on that being Rhys’ jacket. Because he couldn’t stand to see her in public wearing something less revealing than a swimsuit, so he covered her up in some kind of caveman gesture. You woman. Me man. Mine. Grunt.
I sorta love that kind of bullshit. It’s cute.
“Lawson is out there. And Canon!”
“Oh.” I lean back in the chair and get comfortable. “Well, yeah. They’re friends, so that makes sense. Besides, Vince had to get Rhys here tonight. I’m sure he recruited Lawson or Canon to help him make that happen.”
“Why didn’t it occur to me that they might be here? I’m so embarrassed.” She wraps Rhys’ jacket tighter around her body and worries her bottom lip between her teeth.
“So did Rhys win you or what?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know? That was literally the point of the auction.”
“Because I don’t know. One minute I was standing on stage under a spotlight and the next he was wrapping me in his jacket and telling me to get dressed.” She turns around to slip the negligée off and quickly dress.
“Sounds like you’re leaving with Rhys.”
They’re going to have really attractive babies. Lydia will make homemade organic baby food that she freezes into tiny baby-sized portions in a vintage ice cube tray she bought at the Goodwill while Rhys stares at her with a mixture of befuddlement and worship for the rest of his life. I’ll babysit on occasion, take the kids out for non-organic ice cream covered in candy and then return them on a sugar high covered in streaks of chocolate and crumbs.