Boyfriend Bargain (Hawthorne University #1)(52)

Her eyes flare open and red steals up her throat and to her face—which honestly surprises me. She tends to not get embarrassed.

“What are you doing here?”

I know, I have no right to worry about a girl I barely know—especially after my lecture to Z—but last night there was a vulnerable bent to her shoulders.

“Dancing.” She shakes her ass, and the suit stands up and stuffs a twenty in her bikini underwear. I glare at him.

“So this is your new job?”

“You gave me the idea.” Her lips tighten as she returns my scrutiny, her sharp eyes daring me to say anything else, an aura of vicious determination in her features.

“Well, I didn’t mean to!”

She does a shimmy thing with her shoulders, which looks hella awkward.

“You’re not doing that great,” I say, frowning. “This isn’t the place for you to earn extra money.”

She blows a kiss at someone.

I exhale. “I’m not judging, you know. I’m just worried. Some girls come here for extra money and never leave. I don’t want that for you.”

Besides, isn’t she a rich girl like everyone else at HU?

She swings around and her corset drops down, revealing a tiny silver bra, showcasing boobs bigger than I gave her credit for.

“I’m fine.”

When a woman says she’s fine, she is not fine.

“She’s beautiful,” the suit says from his seat at the bar where he’s watching her.

“Just go away, Sugar,” she murmurs before turning her butt toward my face and shaking it. “You’re interrupting my routine.”

With a final look at her, I sigh and head to Mara’s office. This isn’t the place to have a real conversation with Julia.

“Did you get back with Bennett?” is the first thing that comes out of her mouth when she sees me. Smoking a Marlboro Light, she’s sitting behind her oak desk, blonde hair rolled up in big curls that frame her face. Wearing one of her velour tracksuits, her legs are jiggling. The computer is open to her accounts, and I figure she’s been working on payroll.

Luis, her boyfriend, sits in a recliner to the side, his eyeballs plastered to the TV as he watches an episode of Shark Tank. A little pudgy with a receding hairline, he’s no Clint Eastwood in his heyday, but he’s a nice guy and not once have I ever seen him give one of the dancers a second look.

I plop down in one of the other recliners. Mara and Luis practically live here so it’s all about comfort. “Now why would you ask me that?”

She waves her hands around her face expressively. “You’ve got this glow. An aura.”

“Do I?” I blush.

She takes off her glasses, pushing them up to her hair like a headband. “Was it the fellow you made the cherry pie for?”

I smirk. “He doesn’t even like cherry pie.”

She pops an eyebrow. “Smart guy. I like him already. But did he eat it?”

“For me, he took a bite, even tried to lie and tell me he liked it.” I grin.

She points a long pink nail at me. “You had sexual relations, didn’t you?”

Color blooms on my face. “Do you have to call it that? Whatever happened to s-e-x?”

Luis gives us a look, gets up, stretches, and leaves the room. “I’m going to check on the kitchen staff, see if they’re ready for tonight.”

Mara laughs, her gaze following him as he walks out of the room. “He can’t handle it when we talk.”

“Well, you do tend to say just about anything.”

She waves that aside. “No really…tell me.”

“What?”

“Who he is.”

I laugh. “It’s no one.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “One-nighter, huh?”

“No.” I falter. “Well, not exactly.”

Z and I said we were pretend.

But the sex in my closet wasn’t. That was real. That was something.

And those words he said to you—honey chile. I can hear my mama now.

A long exhalation comes from me. But what did Mama ever know about men and relationships?

I rub at my chest just thinking about it. She wasn’t worth anything to my father. She was nothing. What am I to Z? I pull out my phone to see if he’s texted me. He hasn’t.

Mara watches me, her scrutiny not missing a thing. “Everything okay?”

I nod. “Just thinking about Mama.”

She thinks on my response for a moment before settling back in her chair. “Well, maybe it’s a good thing to not forget the past and the bad things she went through. Just don’t let any man get the better of you, especially that Bennett. I never liked him.”

“I know. You’ve told me ten times. I wish you’d told me earlier.” I toy with the straps of my purse, feeling partly annoyed with her—or maybe it’s myself I’m frustrated with. There were times I suspected Bennett wasn’t being honest with me, nights when he came home later than normal from a gig, moments he wouldn’t meet my eyes when I asked about girls who kept coming up and gushing about when was he going to play at the club again. My hands clench. I let him deceive me.

She sucks on her cig. “You say that, but you’re just as stubborn as Lily. She said a hundred times she was done with George, but she always let your daddy right back in the door, even fresh from his wife or drunk from a bar and smelling of cheap perfume.”