“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, put your hands together for the one and only Lola Mariposa!”
The rush of that moment, the split second before anything happened, hit like a freight train. Nervousness, excitement, fear, anticipation, all toppling over one another, crowding her chest, grappling for dominance.
The curtains whooshed open. The spotlight beat down. She could feel their gazes on her.
It thrilled her to her core.
The music started, the old song sounding a little tinny and scratchy in the top-of-the-line speakers, and just like that, Kaylee Whitfield disappeared completely into her braver, sassier, sultrier alter ego.
The blond wig, blue contacts, and stage makeup helped, of course, but there was something magical that happened when she was out on the stage. Anonymous. Free.
She sat at the prop vanity set, her back to the club, pretending to brush her hair and apply blush. Then the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald launched into the first verse of “Bei Mir Bist du Schön” and Kaylee threw a coy glance over her shoulder, careful to keep her sight line just over their heads as she placed her index finger between her ruby-red lips. In a practiced move, she tugged her black satin glove off with her teeth before twirling it over her head and tossing it aside.
She never made eye contact while she was onstage. Because her performances weren’t for the crowd.
No, this moment in the spotlight was all about her.
She let the silk dressing gown slip off one shoulder before pulling it back up. Someone in the back gave a catcall, and Kaylee’s sultry grin grew more so.
Being onstage was a physical expression for the rebelliousness she’d been swallowing down since she was old enough to realize her mother’s terse rebukes of “You’re embarrassing yourself” actually meant Kaylee was embarrassing her mother, her family, and the esteemed Whitfield name, and that some Draconian punishment awaited her when they arrived home. As a result, Kaylee had learned early on how to blend in, to not cause a scene. She was a master at dousing her wants and desires under an impenetrable veneer of propriety and good manners.
But once a week, burlesque saved her, set her free.
She loved its costumes and pageantry.
She loved its tongue-in-cheek showmanship.
And most of all she loved how in control it made her feel.
There was power in the art of the tease, in bringing people to the brink before retreating, only to do it again. She drew power from leaving them wanting more.
She tugged off the other glove in the same fashion before pretending to do a final check of her makeup in the vanity mirror and standing up.
As planned, she twirled one end of the sash holding the dressing gown closed and did her slinkiest walk toward the front of the stage. What was completely unplanned, though, was when her coquettish sweep of the crowd—carefully aimed just above their heads, of course—collided with a pair of green eyes that stopped her dead.
Not that she could see their color from the stage. But despite the distance and the dim light of the club, she knew they were rich jade, darker around the edges, and unlike any eyes she’d seen before...or since. That they squinted when he concentrated. That they sparkled when he teased. That they cut when he was angry.
Aidan.
It had been ten years since she’d last seen him. Five since he and her brother had unceremoniously ended all contact. Still, she’d know Aidan Beckett anywhere.
Something suspiciously like desire bloomed in her abdomen, reminding her of hormone-addled summers spent pretending to read books by the pool so she could furtively admire Aidan’s sun-kissed chest and the way rivulets of water clung to his back muscles as he and her brother, Max, showed off for the omnipresent bevy of interchangeable, age-appropriate, bikini-clad girls giggling and preening nearby.
If he’d been sitting like everyone else watching the show, she never would have seen him. But instead, he was leaning against the wooden pillar at the edge of the seating area, with a bottle of beer in his hand, looking bigger and broader and more delicious than he had when he’d visited during college breaks. Manlier. Like he knew what he was doing.
In fact, he was so devastatingly gorgeous in jeans, a black
