Close Cover (Masters and Mercenaries #16)(15)

“Thank god,” Riley said with obvious relief. “A strip club is way better than moving the rest of Remy’s sad shit.”

“Will there be naked women I get to ogle, or is this some crazy ‘rescue the grownass woman from herself because I’m a possessive caveman asshole’ mission?” Declan asked. “Because if there’s boobs and a buffet, I’m in.”

“I don’t think anyone should eat strip-club food,” Shane said. “Is that even sanitary?”

Riley rolled his eyes. “The strippers don’t touch the food. Hey, do you think Lisa’s stripping? Because then I’m totally in.”

And then Remy would punch any dude looking at her. But no. He wasn’t a possessive caveman asshole. Even when he wanted to be. “I definitely think we should figure out what she’s doing there, and that means taking a field trip. Let’s take two cars in case I need to follow her somewhere else.”

It could be a mistake. She could have gotten off at the wrong place, or maybe she was meeting a friend. At a strip club. Sure.

Was she stripping for cash? She didn’t need cash. Her family was loaded and they didn’t hesitate to hand it over. If she was stripping, then she liked to have eyes on her, enjoyed the thrill of being the gorgeous woman every male eye watched. If she was stripping, she was doing it for thrills.

He could be thrilling. Maybe she was looking for a walk on the wild side and he’d misinterpreted their situation entirely. He’d seen a polite rich girl he couldn’t keep, but maybe she was the curious rich girl he could have for a brief time. For a mutually pleasurable time.

He locked up as he followed the others out, each laughing and joking, their camaraderie easy. So why did he feel like it was all changing on him again, like they would all be different soon? Why did he feel like Lisa was going to be the catalyst for his own change?

Any way he looked at it, he knew she would be trouble. But maybe he was ready for a little trouble in his life.





Chapter Three


Lisa looked at the clock. Seven hours. She’d only been here for seven hours? It seemed like much longer. It seemed like forever.

Cherry Pies smelled like a combination of beer, poor life choices, and shrimp cocktail sauce. And desperation, though she was fairly certain the desperation was mostly coming straight from her.

“I like the getup,” one of the cocktail waitresses said, putting her tray on the bar. “It’s classy. Makes you stand out. Tell me something. Is it Velcro?”

What? She could barely hear over the pounding music. “No. It’s Chanel.”

The cocktail waitress shook her head. “Nah, Chanel don’t wear that uppity shit. She’s old school. Nothing but nipple clamps and a thong. I keep telling her she should wear more clothes if she wants her act to last longer, but no one listens to me. I need four beers and a daiquiri.”

The music died down a bit as this particular show ended, and thank god, the clapping wasn’t nearly as loud. These “gentlemen” showed their appreciation with dollar bills, not enthusiasm.

“What kind of daiquiri?” Who the hell ordered a daiquiri in a strip club? In the hours since she’d been thrown to the lions, she’d poured about a hundred beers, made up dozens of tequila and whiskey shots, and a couple of sidecars and boilermakers.

The fruity drinks hadn’t come up, though she had plenty of citrus. She’d been surprised at how well stocked the bar was. Normally a dive like this would be nothing but beer, whiskey, vodka, and tequila. Cherry Pies sported all the liquors of a good bar and three types of vino—red, white, and a pink of indeterminate origin.

The cocktail waitress, who was in fact topless, shrugged. “No idea. I asked and he said if you didn’t know what a classic daiquiri was you weren’t a real bartender. I told him this is a strip club, ain’t nothing real here, but he insisted. He’s hot, too. Damn, we don’t get many men in here who look like that, and there’s a table of five of them tonight. I thought JoJo was going to bust an implant shaking those things their way, if you know what I mean.”

She didn’t. She understood very little. Since the moment she’d walked in, the world had been a loud, weird place where nothing seemed to stop and glitter rained down from time to time. Certainly the drink orders hadn’t stopped, nor had the head bartender’s orders or Jai’s leering. Or the constant comments about her boobs. Which were covered, and yet the men of Cherry Pies believed in equality. They harassed a woman no matter her age, size, color, or amount of clothing she wore. These men were serious about their sexual harassment, and no amount of clothing would stop them.

Her “interview” had consisted of Jai looking her over, nodding, and then tossing her to the wolves. She’d been there five minutes when she was thrown into the pit, as she now affectionately called the large bar at the back of the establishment. She’d poured her first beer, gotten her first one-dollar tip, and told herself life was going to be okay.

Seven hours later, she was fairly certain she was in purgatory. It wasn’t quite hell because she could still find stuff to laugh at, but her feet hurt so much she wanted to die. It defo wasn’t a good place.

“A classic daiquiri?” It was such an odd request for a place like this. She sighed, realizing who’d ordered. “Is this for Jai?”

It would explain a lot. This whole evening was her interview and she would be told at the end of the night whether or not she’d gotten the job. Then there would be normal things like corporate videos on safety—don’t cut yourself, don’t spit into the drinks no matter how much you want to—and procedures. There would be tons of paperwork. There was an odd comfort in paperwork.