Thick Love (Thin Love, #2)(13)
I didn’t bother with a backward glance and skirted through the throng of people until I slipped into the dressing room.
Summerland’s wasn’t the danger itself. Not when the bouncers kept drunks out of the backstage. The club was beautiful and elegant; burlesque at its finest, true artists at work. They needed warm bodies, choreographers, dancers. I needed some extra cash.
Leann hadn’t liked it, as a boss or as a motherly friend, but she didn’t let my little moonlighting gig threaten my job as one of her dance instructors.
Four months and not a problem. The Summerland dancers liked my choreography. The owner, Misty, was a ball buster, but nice enough to me. Ironside’s presence had never really made a lot of sense. I just didn’t get why Misty let someone like him move around this place like he owned it, but it wasn’t my problem, was it?
Looking in the mirror in the empty dressing room, seeing myself hidden behind the costume mask with my lips and eyes painted to perfection, my dark hair hidden behind that tight, high-dollar wig and my corset only half-way fastened, I finally got the warning. Ironside had become my problem. He was dangerous and, worst of all, he was slick, playing on my need for some extra bank.
“Three hundred bucks for a half an hour of your time. I hear you could use the extra bills.”
“Who’d you hear that from?” I’d asked, trying to not sound as desperate as the man probably thought I was.
He hadn’t bothered answering. A brush of his finger along the broken zipper of my hoodie and a quick glance at my worn and frayed shoes was answer enough.
“You’re a beautiful girl, Aly, and we have a special guest tonight. Half an hour and maybe you won’t have to bust ass so hard this week.”
It had been my aching feet and the looming college tuition I was saving for that had made the decision for me. Still, Ironside had asked me with a smirk, moving the toothpick around in the corner of his mouth. He’d sounded like a snake hissing his way through convincing me to nibble on the forbidden apple. But three hundred bucks? For thirty minutes? That kind of money meant I didn’t eat ramen every day. It meant I didn’t have to take so many shifts at the diner.
I heard another voice then. This one wasn’t as sweet as my grann and there was no humor in the voice.
Tu es un putain, it said. I was a whore.
That was my father’s voice.
Slut? Is that what I’d let Ironside turn me into? Is that what Ransom had done to me?
When I stared back in the mirror I didn’t see the flash and pseudo beauty any more. I saw a desperate young woman. The mask caught on my hair when I pulled it off and the dark make-up smeared against the damp cloth I pulled off the table. This mask, this makeup, this costume, this… assumption—it wasn’t me. I knew who I was before Ironside had convinced me that I should use my body, just for a few minutes.
No. That wasn’t me. That would never be me.
I wasn’t the shamed daughter of Andre Rillieux who left her home, took her mother’s maiden name and tried to forget who her father expected her to be. That scared girl was gone. I’d left her behind. I’d remade myself in my own image.
Nights at the diner, days teaching classes at the dance studio and the occasional odd job here and there kept my head above water. I rented the loft above the studio for very little. I took the bus because a car and insurance were impossible for me. I rarely went out. No big screen TV, no cable; no fancy computer, nothing but a Trac phone for me. Somehow, I managed. Plans, goals, intentions—my list was long and lengthy. I knew what I wanted and how I’d get there. Hiding away in shame and embarrassment wouldn’t do anything but slow me down.
Finally, my face was clean, free from the stage make-up required for tonight’s performance, my brown hair once again loosened from that confining wig. Three faint freckles right on my cheek were visible and I stared at them, tried to focus on those spots to clear Ransom from my head.
Damn. Of anyone in the world, why him?
Earlier, Ironside had pulled me aside backstage, leered over my outfit, the expensive, blonde wig, the mask, the corset, and his approving smirk had done nothing but make me feel desperate for a hot shower.
“This is good,” he’d said. “I think he’ll be into it.”
“Who is this guy?”
But when the toothpick-gnawing jackass pushed back the curtain and I saw Ransom standing near the chair, looking for all the world like he wanted to run out of the room, my mouth went dry. I must have made a noise, because Ironside let the curtain drop and looked hard at me.
“What? You know him?” he’d asked.
Did I know him? What a damn joke. Of course I knew him.
Over a year of watching him disappear in shame and guilt. Pretending I didn’t see him when Tristian brought Ransom to the studio. Wondering how something that beautiful, that real, could be so lost.
“Yeah, but trust me, he has no clue who I am.”
I didn’t explain further to Ironside. He didn’t need to know anything about me, and I’d handled the dance for Ransom the same way I handled every difficult thing in my life—I deflected. I tried hard not to think about how different he looked, how those dark, haunted eyes seemed lighter, a bit freer tonight. I ignored the sensation of that gaze on my body as he watched me dance. He’d stared at me like I was something unreal—an impossible dream, some erotic nightmare come to life.