Those fine lips of his curled up.
Oh Lord.
“I’m all what?” he pushed.
“Can you let me go?” I snapped.
To my shock, he let me go, and not only that, he took a step back.
You will be safe from anything you perceive might make you unsafe, including me.
I started breathing funny.
“Would you like me to explain why I don’t wish to give up?” he asked.
Hell no.
“No,” I answered.
He let that slide and told me, “I want to be clear. I don’t want to come on strong.”
“Well, you’re failin’,” I shared.
At that, he smiled.
I felt my throat close.
With that smile, the cynicism and sly went right out of his eyes.
They were twinkling at me.
Twinkling at me.
“You mistake me,” he said softly. “I don’t want to come on strong. I don’t want to take this at a pace you aren’t comfortable with. Not with what happened to you, but you should understand, I wouldn’t do that even if that hadn’t happened to you. So you’ll set the pace. Just as long as there is a pace.”
“And if I don’t want there to be a pace?” I asked.
“Then I’d like the courtesy of you sharing why you wouldn’t.”
“And I’d like the courtesy of you not makin’ me do that,” I shot back.
He studied me a second then looked beyond me.
Again, he changed and he did it taking another step away from me, his face closing off so much, the cynicism and sly didn’t even come back.
He gave me nothing.
“I see,” he murmured.
I shouldn’t ask.
I really shouldn’t ask.
I asked.
“You see what?”
“You know who I am.”
“Yeah. You’re Marcus Sloan.”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean and I believe you understand that.”
I did, right then.
And what I understood made me laugh.
It just poured out of me.
And I guessed I really needed to laugh because I did it so hard, I bent over with it, wrapping my arms around my belly.
When I got myself together, still giggling, I straightened, lifted a hand to my eye and swept it across the wet under it, hoping my hilarity didn’t mess up my makeup seeing as I’d had to wring miracles to conceal the fading bruises that morning.
“That’s funny,” I told him unnecessarily.
He didn’t find anything funny. He still looked closed off but also there was a hint of transfixed that I didn’t get.
“Your laugh sounds like bells,” he whispered.
I immediately stopped giggling.
He visibly pulled himself together and kept talking.
“Even so, I’m not certain what was funny.”
“You,” I shared.
“Me?” he asked.
“You, thinkin’ I’d have a problem with you bein’ Marcus Sloan,” I expanded.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Nope.” I shrugged. “Don’t care either. Though, that’s to say ‘nope’ don’t mean that I don’t know. I just don’t really know. I still don’t care. And that’s not why I don’t wanna have dinner with you.”
“I’m still not understanding.”
“Honey bunch, I’m a stripper.”
“Yes. And?”
I shut up.
Dear God, he thought I thought I was better than him.
No.
He thought I thought I had reason to think I was better than him.
“I don’t judge,” I said quietly. “Life’s life and a person’s gotta do what they feel they gotta do to get along in it.”
“This is correct.”
“So I don’t care what you do or who you are.”
“And this delights me.”
My heart started racing because it did. It delighted him.
And I knew this because his eyes were again twinkling.
“Men are assholes,” I shared.
“Some of them are, yes,” he somewhat agreed.
“Not met many who aren’t. My count, all my life, that number equals two.”
Those twinkling eyes stopped twinkling in order to flash.
“Just two?”
“Yup. Two,” I confirmed.
“Although I find that knowledge upsetting, I’ll share I’d like to make that three,” he told me something I already (mostly) got.
“Listen, Marcus, this,” I gestured between us with my hand and this time he didn’t watch it, he didn’t tear his gaze from my own “it’s sweet, honey. Real sweet. Thanks for it. For the daisies. All that’s real nice. But a woman lives the life I’ve lived and finds herself raped in a parking lot, she makes certain decisions. And those decisions don’t include dinner with a hot guy who wears a suit real well, has a superior set of lips, and opens the door for her. She goes about her business her own damned self and that’s that. I got me a good job. I got me a Porsche. I’m in the market to find me a house I like where I can garden and set the table like a good Southern woman should. What I don’t got and don’t want is a man.”
“Would you allow me to try to change your mind about that?”
I shook my head and his eyes moved then, watching my hair shake with it.
They came back to mine when I answered, “Nope.”
“Would you allow me to not allow you to not let me attempt to change your mind about that?”
That was convoluted for certain, but I still got him.
And what else I got was that I could probably repeat my “nope,” but I knew he was going to find a way to try anyway.
He was just not going to succeed.
So I shrugged again and said, “Knock yourself out, darlin’.”
His lips curled up again and I wished they hadn’t because a normal curl was fine. A smile rocked my world.
The way they were right then set my coochie to tingling.
Seriously.
And my coochie hadn’t tingled for months, not to mention no way in hell I thought it ever would again after my time on the asphalt out back.
“Dinner tomorrow,” he said.
“No,” I replied.
Slowly, his head tilted to the side and that hit my coochie too.
Damn.
“Thank you for speaking with me, Daisy.”
He was ending this.
But he was absolutely not ending this.
Crap.
“Not a problem.”
“Would you like me to escort you to your car or back to your friend?” he asked.
“Been gettin’ around mostly okay on my own, honey bunch. So thanks. I’m good.”
“Would you…like me to escort you to your car…or back to your friend?” he repeated, his words firmer, he took his time saying them and I got his message.
“I see this is gonna be interesting,” I muttered.
“Agreed,” he did not mutter.
We stared at each other.
This went on awhile.
Marcus ended it.
“You shouldn’t have laughed.”
“Pardon?”
“I might have let you be, but you laughed.”
Oh Lord.
I didn’t feel that in my coochie.
But I felt it.
Oh yeah, I felt it.
“Marcus—”
He cut me off. “To your friend. But I’ll leave a man, and when you’re ready, he’ll be outside the dressing room and he’ll escort you to your car.”
“That isn’t necessary.”
“I know you think that. But you’re wrong.”
We did more staring until I sighed and mumbled, “Right.”
I moved to the door.
He opened it for me.
He followed me down the stairs and at the bottom he put his hand again to my back as he escorted me to Chardonn
ay.
When we got to the dressing room, Ashlynn was there, too.
He left me there with only a murmured, “Ladies.”
But he gave me a look that was a promise.
Hell.
He closed the door behind him.
“Okay, he totally scares me but I’d be on my back in about a second and my dreams of med school that I’ve had since I was twelve I’d totally blow off if that guy wanted to make me his moll, and I don’t give one crap what that says about me,” Chardonnay breathed the second the door latched.
“He just plain scares me,” Ashlynn said, staring at me.
I ignored her and looked to Chardonnay.
“Girl, go rinse out that G-string and give it to me. I gotta get home. I got some glue gunning to do.”
Chardonnay shook herself out of it, grinned at me, waggled her eyebrows, and then sashayed to the bathroom.
I took in a deep breath.
And then I let it go.
And I let it go sliding Marcus Sloan’s card in the back pocket of my jeans.
Chapter Four
Steel Magnolias
Daisy
“These are fine. These are fine times about seven thousand. I need these.”
“You’ve got seven thousand pairs of shoes, Tod. You don’t need anything.”
“Stevie, love of my life, are you not seeing these?”
“I’m seeing them.”
“Then have you gone temporarily insane?”
“I’m thinking he has,” a girl said.
“I’m thinking if he doesn’t let you buy them, I’ll get them and you can borrow them from me,” another girl said.
“Sold!” the first (obviously gay) guy cried.
“Let’s go,” the first girl said. “Las Delicias has been there for years but I’m not taking any chances seeing as I need a beef burrito, STAT.”
“Box ’em up and let’s move, I’m hungry too,” the second (also gay, seeing as he was the love of the other one’s life) guy stated.
I sat with my back to them in chairs in the Nordstrom shoe department, listening to them go, and I didn’t turn around to look at them. Not because I didn’t want them to see my face. The bruises were fading good now so my conceal job was kickass.
But I did sit there thinking I needed a gay posse.
Especially if they went shoe shopping with you.
I also needed a girl posse.
But even though all the strippers were real nice, that wasn’t my thing. I’d never managed to pull one of those together, even in the days when I’d put the effort in to try.
And since I didn’t, I quit trying.
In my line of work, especially at Smithie’s where he took care of the girls in a way they didn’t feel the need to be catty, I might have been able to manage it.
The thing was, I was the headliner. The red velvet rope out front was for me.
I suspected Britney Spears was probably friendly with her dancers.
But they didn’t go shoe shopping together.
And I didn’t want to turn around in Nordstrom of all places (where some dreams came true, even if they did this to the tune of a credit card machine) to see what I was missing.
Not just then, but my entire life.
I knew I wasn’t meant to have any kind of posse, as much as I’d always wanted it, and especially as much as it’d be good to have it right then after what had happened to me.
I just didn’t need it staring me in the face when I didn’t have it.
Instead, I looked down at the shoes I was trying on.
They cost twelve hundred dollars. They were class on a lollipop stick. Considering the serious hike in pay Smithie gave me a month ago, I could totally afford them (and could do that even before he jacked up my pay, but did it weirdly making me work less, but I didn’t quibble).
And they were so not me.
“What do you think?” the shoe saleslady said.
“You got anything in denim?” I asked.
“Uh…no,” she answered.
“Clear plastic, maybe with a daisy embedded in the platform?”
“Um…I don’t think so.”
“Slides with a seven-inch heel, three-inch platform, the whole thing bejeweled, maybe in pink?”
“Well…um, I think that’s a no too, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
I nodded.
I’d already learned Nordstrom shoe department didn’t do Daisy.
It still didn’t hurt to try.
I unbuckled the strappy sandal I had on and slid it off, murmuring, “That’s okay. But thanks.”
“Valentino does ‘Rockstud,’” she informed me.
I’d checked out the Rockstud.
It wasn’t all that bad.
But it didn’t say Daisy.
“Not my thing,” I shared, putting the sandal in the box, grabbing it, and handing it to her.
“Okay, well, if there’s anything else you see you’d like to try, I’m here.”
“Thanks, honey bunch, you’re sweet.”
I smiled at her.
She smiled at me and wandered away with the box.
I put on my shoes (black patent, platform sandal, one-inch rhinestone ankle strap, tube of rolled open red lipstick for a heel), got up, hitched up my purse on my shoulder, and glided to the makeup counter to while away more of my Saturday afternoon.
The shoe department might let me down in a variety of places.
But any makeup counter from Walgreens to Neiman’s worked for me.
And that afternoon, it so did.
* * * *
The doorbell rang right in the middle of Julia Roberts having a diabetic fit in a salon chair in Dolly Parton’s garage.
This did not make me happy.
Not Julia having a fit, of course, that never made me happy.
But I was right then not happy about my doorbell ringing during the best movie of all time.
I paused the movie, got up on my bare feet, and marched to the door in my hot-pink Juicy Couture tracksuit with the rhinestone, interlaced “JC” on the back with the crown on top surrounded with an oval of sparkles.
I looked through the peephole and I knew what I’d see because he’d told me he wasn’t going to give up.
But he was interrupting Steel Magnolias.
No one did that.
Not even a tall, dark, rich, hot guy gentleman who opened doors for me.
And right then, even if he was not in a suit but looked just as f-i-n-e, fine in a V-necked, dark-blue sweater that did things to his eyes that, if I wasn’t ticked about Steel Magnolias, would have done things to my coochie, and dark-wash jeans, he had to know that.
So I unlocked the deadbolt, slapped open the latch, and yanked open my own damned door.
“You’re interrupting Steel Magnolias,” I snapped tetchily to Marcus Sloan.
He burst out laughing.
He really shouldn’t have done that.
He really shouldn’t have laughed.
Really.
He was handsome, for sure, just as he was.
But laughter took years off his face.
Years.
I didn’t know how old he was. He looked in his mid-thirties (and I wasn’t going there seeing as he clearly had established his place in Denver at a young age which said something about him and what it said, to a girl like me, was all good).
But right then, he looked like the boy you hoped would neck with you (and you’d let him get to second base) after he took you to a movie.
Though, it was more.
The deep sumptuousness of his laughter felt like everything.
Every diamond in the world laid at your feet.
Every fur piled deep.
Every gold necklace a tangle of beauty twenty feet deep.
Still chuckling, he turned to the side and jerked his head toward my apartment, “Set it up.”
Without a choice, I shifted out of the way as a tall, blond man wearing a black suit, white shirt, and thin
black tie walked in carrying a paper bag by the handles in one hand and balancing a baker’s box in the other.
Following him came a heavyset man dressed the exact same way. He’d lost most of his steel gray hair and was for some reason wearing sunglasses even though the sun had gone down, not to mention, he was indoors. He had two bottles of champagne pressed to his chest in one arm, two delicate champagne flutes dangling from the other with…
I narrowed my eyes at them…
Beautiful peacocks engraved in the glass.
Really beautiful peacocks.
Perfection.
Damn him to hell.
I turned my narrowed eyes to Marcus as he moved in, putting a hand to my waist, and this time he used it to guide me where he wanted me to go.
Right smack dab into the middle of my living-slash-dining room.
I let this happen mostly because I was beginning to smell something.
Something so good it forced all of your attention to it.
Which meant I saw the first guy opening lids on food containers, the aroma of what was inside beating back the scent of flowers and filling the room.
“Barolo Grill,” Marcus said and my suddenly food-dazed gaze drifted to him. “Prosciutto and melon. Lobster salad. Truffle risotto. And bombolonis for dessert. With Dom, of course.”
With Dom, of course.
Dom Pérignon and lobster salad in my two-bedroom, not-much-to-write-home-about, uninspired-floorplan-like-gazillions-of-complexes-all-over-the-you-nited-States-of-America, galley kitchen, living-slash-dining-room, only-thing-good-about-it-was-the-master-bath apartment that I’d rented before I started to make a mint off stripping.
“Are you loco?” I asked.
His lips curled up. “No, I’m hungry.” He turned his attention to his men. “That’s good and that’s all.”
They started to move out but stopped when Marcus told them to do it.
His hand slid to the small of my back. “Daisy, this is my man, Brady, and my driver, Ronald.”
In turn, first the blond, then the sunglassed man nodded to me.
“Pleased to meet you,” Brady said.
“Same,” Ronald grunted.
With nothing more, they both took off.
I watched the door close behind them and looked back at Marcus.
“You have a driver?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“So he can drive me where I need to go.”
I felt my eyes get squinty again.