Stripped Bare (Stripped #1)(55)

He nodded, but I only managed to eat two fries before he spoke.

“You got feelings for him?”

I ran my hand through my hair and looked away. Two days ago? I might have said no. Probably would have. Now? Now, I didn’t want to talk about it.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Funny,” he mused, picking his burger up again and staring at me hotly. “That was his response when I asked him the same question this morning.”

“Beck?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut the f*ck up.”



I didn’t want to admit how many times I’d changed my clothes. I’d gone from a trusty little black dress to jeans to a skirt and back to a dress. I had a discarded pile of clothes on the floor of my bedroom, staring at me in annoyance.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. So I’d brought too many with me. It was what it was.

I was trying to reconcile the dirty-mouthed, cocky West with the one Beck had revealed to me earlier and, indeed, the one West himself was slowly revealing to me. It seemed incomprehensible that the demanding alpha male I’d come to know so well had such a soft, reluctant side.

More importantly, why was it coming out with me? Why, two years after his divorce and apparently several women, was I the one he was showing it to?

It didn’t make any sense. Mostly because I was the one he shouldn’t have been showing it to.

I was nothing special, but then I wasn’t not special, either. I was average, as far as a woman in her mid-twenties went. Sure, I probably could have stood to lose a few pounds and might or might not have always remembered to brush my hair, but it could have been worse.

I was honestly torn, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was stupid. I knew nothing about West. Sure, I knew how he’d come to own the strip club, he was divorced, and he had a kooky family, but that was it. I didn’t know anything about the man inside, not really.

So how was it possible that I was slowly falling for the man?

I dropped onto my bed and huffed. Was I really going to do this? Go out for the night with Beck? Even if our first, last, and only destination was Rock Solid, it wasn’t the point. It was insanity. I was already too involved with these two men. My projects didn’t usually plan for me to get so up close and personal with my clients. Usually, the most intimate it got was a business meeting with food.

But...damn it, Beck felt like a friend, and West felt like...West.

I didn’t want to think about what he felt like to me.

I sighed and looked at my pile of clothes. I didn’t feel like getting dressed up. I felt like climbing into bed and sleeping, if I had to take time off. Still, I didn’t think Beck would appreciate it if I was still in my underwear when he showed up.

Or maybe he would. He probably would.

I forced myself to get dressed into black jeans, a black tank, a white kimono, and nude heels. I felt like my hair was a mess, but I honestly couldn’t be bothered to brush it, so I ran my fingers through the flame-colored strands a few times until I’d gone from mess to messy-sexy.

It was still a mess, but I was telling myself otherwise.

By the time Beck knocked at my door, I was ready. Kind of. I didn’t know what I was ready for, but I did know I’d barely spoken to West that day, if a couple of text message exchanges counted as speaking, and I wasn’t sure they really did.

“Cheer up, buttercup.” Beck chucked me beneath the chin before he pulled away from the curb. “If he’s still bothering you, don’t worry. He’s been a grumpy bastard all day.”

I was probably the reason why. “I just don’t know if this is a good idea.”

“I’m taking you for a couple of drinks, Mia. You’ve been working hard and you need to unwind. Unwinding with West only complicates the situation further because I know his kind of unwinding.”

“It’s pretty unnerving that you know all this stuff.”

He shrugged. “I might be the joker out of the two of us, but I notice just as much stuff as he does. Like I notice how you look at him when you think I’m not paying attention.”

“Well, he’s hot. I’m female. Sue me for staring.”

“I notice how he looks at you when he thinks neither of us will realize.”

“I don’t have an answer for that.”

“Of course you don’t.”

I caught his grin out of the corner of my eye.

“There isn’t an answer for it you can give.”

I looked away and just managed to resist the powerful urge to roll my eyes. I didn’t want to think about answers or questions. I still wanted to go home and go to bed, but as Beck pulled into the parking lot of Rock Solid, next to West’s Audi, I sighed with resignation.

I was going in there whether I liked it or not.

“Hey, Beck, who’s working the bar tonight?”

He frowned as he locked the car. “Vicky. Why?”

“Oh thank god. If it was Tish, I’d consider clawing my eyeballs out with a plastic straw.”

“Wow. I know she’s not exactly Little Miss Sunshine, but that’s drastic.”

I briefly recapped our first meeting for him.

He fist-bumped the security guys and held the door open for me. “Okay, I get it,” he said loudly as the thumping music pounded through the air.